The Thing 2: Infection
by Obsidian Productions
Summary: A novelization of the 2002 The Thing video game. Captain J. F. Blake has just been pulled off of leave and flown to Antarctica. His mission: Investigate an isolated American research outpost gone silent. Soon, he finds himself engaged in a brutal fight for survival against a faceless enemy that assumes the forms of those it kills.
1. Chapter 01: The Worst Place on Earth

"Hold on, Blake! Enemy fire coming in!"

Blake stared out the open side of the Blackhawk at the constantly shifting mass of jungle below. He could see gunfire, tracers spitting back and forth across the landscape. Soldiers from both sides of the conflict writhed beneath the thick canopy, locked in the intricate choreography of combat. Screaming came from below. Men dying, men shouting orders, men roaring at each other as they lost themselves to the bloodlust of warfare.

He looked back into the chopper. His team was seated around him, geared up, faces painted with dark smears of burnt cork ends, their eyes wild, wide and set. They were ready to do this. The chopper lurched to one side, then did it again. Blake's stomach tossed and turned, threatening vomit. Not here, not now, he'd gotten over this fear thing a long time ago. Or so he told himself. The men were staring at him, waiting for him to say something.

The chopper lurched on, pressing deeper into the combat zone.

Blake stared back at his men. He opened his mouth to say something, to outline the objective again, give them some words of encouragement, crack a joke...but suddenly, the knowledge of what he was doing, what was going on, abruptly slipped away.

He had no idea where he was, why he was there or what was even going on.

The chopper lurched again, violently, and he realized, a second too late, that he'd somehow forgotten to latch himself in.

He was up, out and over the side, and falling.

Falling...

Blake snapped into the awareness that the feeling of falling was still present. He had just enough time to realize that he _was_ in a helicopter. Reality was, for several seconds, a confusion of fear. Gray-white snow blew past the windshields ahead of him and the chopper seemed to be falling. The it stopped and they were gaining air again. He looked over at the pilot.

"Sorry!" the man shouted. "Bad turbulence!"

Blake just nodded, trying to make himself relax. Memories of the past day came back to him. Unhappy memories.

Blake was in Delta Force, one of the groups in the Special Forces segment of the United States Army. He was used to a lot of crazy things that most people weren't. When your job was rescuing hostages, trading bullets with insane guys in a variety of different environments and all manner of counter-terrorism, you learned to put up with a lot. Blake had been in the Army for five years before joining up with SFOD-D, or Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta, for an additional five years. He liked his work.

At thirty one, he was in the best shape of life, had more than enough money to retire on and had no intention of changing careers. He could see doing his job until the day he died, or the day he was no longer capable of dragging his ass out into the field. But that day was a long way off...he hoped. So what was he doing in a helicopter heading towards one of the worst, most isolated and lethal places on the face of the planet?

After a three month counter-terrorism op in the Middle East, Blake had finally earned some rest and relaxation. He'd been shipped back to the States and was staying at Fort Freeman in Virginia while he decided where he was going to go. He'd just made the decision to head to the opposite coast and relax in California when fresh orders came through in the form of a frowning pilot in blue sunglasses kindly asking him to get his ass on the chopper, no questions asked. He had the appropriate papers, so Blake was obligated to go.

They'd flown down without a word spoken between them to Florida, switched to a helicopter with extra, external fuel tanks and kept going south. Blake had had missions like these before, where he was whisked away in the middle of the night, or the middle of some well-deserved R & R, but never so far south. At first he thought they might have been going to South America, but for hours upon hours it had been nothing but ocean.

And now the ocean had turned largely to ice.

They'd made a single stop at a naval vessel for refueling, then kept going without a word. Blake hadn't even bothered asking where they were going. For a while he thought he was being relocated to some remote island for some strange kind of mission, but now their objective was clear. Antarctica. Or somewhere thereabouts.

What the hell could possibly be on Antarctica?

Blake had fought in some capacity on every other continent in his career. Granted, most of it was centered on either Europe, Asia or Africa, but he'd gone up against drug runners in Mexico, kidnappers in South America and gun smugglers in Australia. He never thought in a million years that he'd be able to cross 'fight on all seven continents' off his bucket list. His curiosity was peaked, and after ten years in the Army, that was saying something.

He managed to go another half hour before finally breaking down.

"How much longer?" he called, struggling to be heard over the shrieking of the winds and the roar of the engine.

"Half an hour," the pilot yelled back.

Blake nodded and folded his arms across his chest, leaning back into his chair and trying as hard as he could not to piss his pants.

He really had to go.

Outside, beyond the windshields, the snow continued to swirl madly by.

* * *

Gray-white snow finally gave way to something else almost forty five minutes later. Blake was nearly nodding off again when he noticed a classic descent in speed and altitude. The chopper was coming in for a landing. A few moments later, he spied the makings of a couple dozen dark buildings, wreathed in ice and fog, lit only by some powerful aquamarine lights. The helicopter came down for a landing on one of the landing pads, snowy mist billowing around them. The pilot shut down the engine and sat back in his chair for a moment.

"Holy crap," he muttered. "Might be one of my longest flights."

"Definitely mine," Blake replied.

The man popped his neck and slowly stood, groaning as he did. "God, let's go. I need a very long nap," he said.

Blake stood and followed him out of the cramped cockpit as the engines fully shut down. He checked his watch as they made their way through the cabin. He'd been in the air for a little over eighteen hours. He'd been asleep for probably half of that time. Any lingering lethargy was immediately blown away as the pilot opened the door. Frigid winds and snow shrieked into the cabin as the pilot hopped out.

Blake quickly followed him and hopped onto the landing pad, his legs slightly unsteady. The pilot slammed the door shut and immediately turned back around, rubbing his hands together furiously, looking around.

"What are we waiting for? And where are we?" Blake asked, shouting to be heard over the winds now.

"Carpenter Station!" the pilot replied. "We're waiting for someone to brief you on whatever the hell they want you for and to show me to a warm bed!"

Blake was thinking of something to say back when a figure bundled in bright red cold weather gear appeared from the mist. He motioned for the pair of them to follow. They did so without a word. The trio stepped off the landing pad into ankle-deep snow. Blake shivered violently, horrified by how cold it was. He'd been to Alaska before, and he thought that was cold. It seemed like a vacation compared to this. How far below zero was it? He imagined that if he didn't get inside soon, he would seriously have to worry about frostbite.

They made one stop at one of the buildings where their guide patted the pilot on the shoulder and pointed towards the door. The man thanked him and hurried off, disappearing into the building. Leaving Blake alone with his mysterious guide. They trundled on through the snow for another five minutes, which felt maddening in the horrible weather. Blake shot glances up at the dead gray skies overhead, wondering what time it was locally. He supposed it didn't matter. It was dark, which meant it was going to _be_ dark for a long time.

Finally, mercifully, Blake was brought into one of the buildings. The pair of them stood there for a moment in the reception area, which was little more than a room with a few tables and chairs, totally void of life.

"You got a bathroom around here?" Blake asked, seriously beginning to worry about his bladder bursting.

"Yeah, but try to make it fast, Colonel Whitley wants to see you immediately," the man replied as he pulled a hat and goggles off.

Blake hesitated slightly as the man began walking down a corridor ahead of them. Whitley? The name sounded immediately familiar. He shrugged it off for the moment, hurrying down the corridor after the man, who had stopped in front of one of the doors. Blake pushed it open and found a communal bathroom inside.

Praising all that was good, he hurried over to the nearest urinal, unzipped and let fly. For a very long moment, what felt like it might have been ages, he relieved himself. When he was finished, he washed his hands and headed back out into the corridor. The man led him deeper into the building, which looked like some kind of office building. Finally, he was shown to a door at the end of a long corridor.

"Good luck," his guide said as Blake stepped into the room.

Now that he could actually think, Blake recalled who Whitley was as he studied the room he'd been ushered into. It looked like a simple office: a wood and metal desk to the right with a pair of foldout metal chairs facing it. Two filing cabinets on the opposite wall, a potted plant and water cooler. No pictures, nothing on the wall, no personality at all.

No one in the room, either.

Whitley...

That was the name of a Colonel he'd worked with several times over the past five years. A man that sent chills down his spine for a reason he'd never quite been able to pinpoint. What the hell was he doing all the way down here? And what did he want with Blake? For that matter...where was the man? Blake sighed softly, unusually frustrated with the cloak-and-daggers routine. He looked out one of the few windows in the room, but that was no help. Nothing but an eerie blue-lit snowfall that cut visibility down to a few feet.

There was the sound of a toilet flushing from behind the only other door in the room, along the back wall. A second later there was the sound of running water from a faucet, then, finally the door opened. Colonel Virgil Whitley stepped out and stopped, looking over at Blake. The man was just as Blake remembered him: tall and thin, somewhere in his late forties or early fifties. He had cool gray eyes and short-cropped brown hair.

And his smile...there was something creepy about it.

Here, he smiled and crossed the room, offering Blake his hand. "Captain Blake, I'm glad you made it down here," he said.

Blake snapped the man a quick salute, then offered his hand. "Colonel," he said curtly.

Whitley's smiled widened and he crossed to the desk. "A military man to the end, huh Blake?"

"Yes, Colonel. The Army's been good to me," Blake replied, following him.

"You've been good to us, Blake. Please, have a seat," Whitley said, doing so himself and motioning to the pair of foldout chairs.

"Yes, Colonel," Blake replied, sitting down.

For a moment, neither man spoke. Blake was waiting for Whitley to explain the situation, explain why he'd been dragged out of bed and hauled halfway across the world, but Whitley just seemed interested in studying him. Finally, he let out a small puff of air, what might have been a sigh, and straightened up in his chair.

"Everything I'm about to tell you is to be considered top secret. Do you understand me, Captain?" he asked, suddenly all business.

"Yes, Colonel," Blake replied sharply. So it _was_ serious.

"Good. Admittedly, I'm not entire sure where to begin. It's been a bit of a clusterfuck down here so far..." Whitley said, trailing off for a moment. That unsettled Blake. Military men, especially Colonels, especially Whitley, always knew where to begin.

"The biggest problem we're facing here is a lack of intelligence. It all started when a supply copter heading out for a routine checkup of one of our outposts. US Outpost Thirty One. They're a small research base, about a dozen personnel. The supply team reported back to McMurdo Station and said the base was blown to hell. Massive explosives damage. They thought it was an accident but...then some of our other outposts stopped reporting in. We were willing to chalk it up to bad weather, but then we heard that the other nations were having trouble getting in touch with some of _their_ outposts. The Norwegians, the Japanese, the Australians...obviously, something is going on. It was when we picked up a reference to an unidentified flying object buried in the ice that we really sat up and took notice," Whitley said, stopping and staring intently at Blake.

"This is a First Contact situation?" he asked finally, his mind reeling. Aliens? Here, down in Antarctica of all places?

"We're not sure," Whitley said. "We've had no other reports, but the President was concerned and interested enough to give me operational discretion. I've spent the last week having a command outpost built and getting some of you D-Force boys brought down to help me with this. This is what I need from you Blake. I'm assembling several teams to investigate some of the outposts officially. You get Outpost Thirty One. I need boots on the ground. I need you and your team to figure out what the hell happened there."

"Yes, Colonel. I'll get right on it," Blake replied, standing up.

Whitley smiled. "I knew I found the right man for the job. Your designation is Delta Team. Your three men are gearing up in the hangar. Also, I thought you might like to know your old friend Pierce is here. He's commanding Alpha Team."

"Pierce is here?" Blake asked.

"Yes."

Blake frowned, considering that. It had been a long time since he'd spoken to Neil Pierce...they hadn't exactly split on the best of terms. Hopefully they wouldn't have to talk to each other, or, if they did, they wouldn't let old wounds get in the way of work.

"Come on. I'll show you to the team."

* * *

Blake was finally beginning to approach something like warm as Whitley led him through the installation, past several more offices and to an underground tunnel that connected the building to the hangar. Whitley said nothing along the way and Blake was left to his own thoughts. First contact...it was something he'd thought about from time to time. Just one of those random questions that popped up when he was falling asleep or after he'd seen a movie. When it came to first contact, it seemed like everyone assumed it would be like the little weird-looking guy from E.T. But, in Blake's opinion, it would be closer to that horror movie, Alien.

At least he was going in armed.

But something wasn't adding up. If Whitley really thought this was a First Contact situation, then he wouldn't just be sending in guys with guns. There'd be men in bio-hazard suits, geniuses in lab coats, smooth-talkers in suits to act as negotiators with whatever intelligence mankind might be meeting with for the first time. Why just send in a few Special Forces teams? Did it mean that Whitley didn't take the idea seriously and brought it up...for his own personal reasons? But then why the top-secret deal? Something definitely wasn't right.

Blake decided to just do what he always did: his job. To the best of his ability. The pair climbed a stairwell and came out into a broad, open hangar. All manner of workbenches, repair stations and vehicles in various states of assembly were scattered across the huge room. Whitley directed him towards a trio of men off to one side, gathered around a table. They turned to face the pair as they approached.

Blake recognized two of them. William Burrows was an aging Special Forces engineer in his early forties. He was a heavyset man, his bulk hiding how muscular he really was, who came from New York. Blake had worked with him maybe half a dozen times on all sorts of missions. He was an engineer who was surprisingly good with his hands and all sorts of technical things. What made it was surprising was his apparent ineptitude. Blake had always thought the make a little slow on the uptake, but he'd eventually learned that he just didn't really care about social graces. He did his job, liked to drink and let people think whatever they wanted about him.

The other man he recognized was a tall, fit black man named Tyrone North. He was a soldier through and through. He struck Blake as very comfortable on the battlefield. They'd only worked together once before, but it was memorable. They'd been part of a squad tasked with infiltrating an enemy location and recovering some critical intel. They'd been discovered, things had nearly gone belly-up, but North, Blake and a few others had shot their way to the intel and out again. North had never broken a sweat, figuratively.

If anything, he seemed to be enjoying himself.

A good man to have your back in a firefight.

The final man was young, skinny and pale. He looked fidgety and introduced himself as Weldon. He was to be their medic. Blake frowned as he studied the man. He couldn't be older than twenty five and he had an air of worry about him. Finally, he decided that it didn't matter. You didn't get to be in the Special Forces if you were a worrier.

"Blake is your Captain," Whitley said. "I apologize for this quick-and-dirty style briefing, but honestly, we don't have a lot to go on. You'll want to dress even warmer, Blake. It's forty below out there and hypothermia is a real concern."

Blake nodded for him to continue as he began pulling on a heavier coat, pants and a new set of boots, as well as an extra layer of socks.

"Outpost Thirty One has twelve personnel. The initial team did a search and found no one alive. Honestly, at this point, there shouldn't be anyone alive there. Search for survivors, but also for information. We need to learn anything we can about what happened," Whitley said.

"Yes, Colonel," Blake replied, finishing getting dressed.

"I'll leave you to it and be in touch via radio. There's a helicopter waiting just outside for you as soon as you're ready. Good luck."

Whitley left Blake staring at the equipment table they'd set up for the team. "Hello, Delta Squad," Blake said as he opened up a backpack and fed several bits of supplies into it. Namely, an extra suit of clothing, several bottles of waters and a few MREs. "I'm Captain John Blake. Two of you I've worked with before. One of you, I haven't."

"I guess that's me," Weldon said.

"Yep. You going to be all right on this op?" Blake asked, shrugging into the pack.

"Yes, Captain," Weldon replied curtly.

"Good. Why don't you three make for the chopper? I'll be there in a moment," Blake said.

The trio nodded and left him to it. Blake spent a moment checking out the MP-5 they'd given him. It was a nice, black submachine gun that he was very familiar with. Blake checked the sights, the weight, the feel. He loaded it up, flipped on the safety and shrugged into the shoulder strap. He grabbed four flares and three magazines for the MP-5. There was nothing else on the table. Blake would've liked a sidearm, but apparently, time was short.

He left the hangar and made for the helicopter.


	2. Chapter 02: Outpost 31

Blake was still mulling over the curiosities he'd encountered so far as the chopper shot through the dismal weather conditions over the frozen seventh continent. He hadn't come up with anything new, so he turned to the others.

"Did any of you see anything weird after you got down here?" he asked. "Anything out of the ordinary at all?"

"I didn't. I just got here about an hour ago," North said.

"Me too," Burrows replied. "Besides the whole being shoved on a helicopter and flown down to Antarctica, and the mention of an alien."

"What about you?" Blake asked, turning his attention to Weldon, who had remained unusually silent so far.

"I got here three days ago," Weldon replied finally. "I got dropped off at somewhere else, they called it Strata Station. It was big and right next to an airfield. It looked all brand new. They were still building a lot of it. A lot of it was underground."

"What did they want with you?" Blake asked, frowning.

"I don't know, really. They had me look over a few guys, run some tests on them. Normal tests, nothing strange, I guess. They seemed perfectly healthy," Weldon replied.

"Who were these guys? Special Forces?"

"Maybe...I'm not sure. They did seem like soldiers, definitely. Maybe SEALs or even Black Ops." He shrugged. "I couldn't be sure. No one ever told me anything, just asked me to do these tests, checking their blood, their health, their organs."

"Huh," Blake muttered.

Stranger still.

The pilot gave out the five minute warning.

"All right, focus up, people. We'll be sticking together for this op, I don't want anyone going off on their own. We're looking for survivors but there's a good chance we'll find none. What Whitley really wants is information. So prioritize anything that might hold it: papers, computers, documents of any kind. Any questions?"

There were none.

Blake nodded and sat back, trying to calm himself, to shove these confused concerns from his mind. But he'd only had a minute before his radio crackled to life.

" _Captain Blake? It's Whitley. What's the situation? Over."_

Blake sighed and retrieved his radio. He glanced out the window as something caught his eye and realized they'd arrived. The helicopter was banking over the remains of Outpost Thirty One. Blake frowned. "Not good, over," he said into the radio.

" _Have you found anything? Over."_

"No. We haven't landed yet, Colonel. But I can confirm that the base is basically gone. FUBAR. Looks like massive explosives damage and..." he paused, spying a toppled communications antenna, "the transmitter's down." He sighed. "Finding anything here will be like searching for a needle in a haystack, over," he muttered.

" _Understood. Keep your team together and get inside. Remember, its forty below out there. I'll try to have the chopper back to you within an hour, it's needed elsewhere. Unfortunately, it looks like there's a bad storm headed our way. Over."_

"Fantastic...we'll do a sweep and report back, Colonel. Over."

" _Affirmative. Out."_

The chopper was coming in for a landing now.

As soon as they were down, Blake stood up and moved to the door. He opened it up, immediately letting in a swirl of snow and wind.

"Go! Go!"

He watched his three teammates hurry off the chopper and went after them. Slamming the door shut, he ducked his head down and hurried across the open field of snow they'd been dropped off in. For the moment, visibility was nil, but as the chopper left, it returned to merely low. Blake took a minute to look around, studying the area he'd been dropped in. True desolation surrounded him. Behind him there was nothing but seemingly endless snow and bits of debris from whatever explosion had ripped through Outpost Thirty One.

Ahead of him was the base itself. A bleak, half-collapsed building was waiting for him. He shivered, and decided some shelter was better than none for the moment.

"Form up!" he called. "Check those trigger fingers."

The three men responded affirmatively and formed up around him. He lead the way, boots crunching in the recently fallen snow. This op was already off to a bad start. Seeing the wrecked remains of the outpost ahead of him was doing nothing to soothe his frayed nerves. Blake made himself focus. It was time to do a job now and there might be lives at stake. Hell, there were _always_ lives at stake, it seemed. Either survivors here or his team.

Blake reached a door that led into what remained of the main compound and stared in through an open window. He could see very little. Reaching down, he grabbed a flare and lit it up. Shouldering the door open, he stepped in, flare in one hand, gun in the other. He made way after checking to see that there were no hostiles in the immediate area. They'd come to a darkened corridor that seemed to be blocked off by some debris.

Blake ignored that for a moment. There was another doorway in the area. He opened it up and looked around. What appeared to be the remains of the comms room awaited his inspection. It looked like someone had gone nuts and taken some blunt instrument to most of the gear. The only light being provided came from Blake's flare and a little bit of ambient light from the exterior filtering in through the windows and a big hole in the back wall.

"Damn," Burrows muttered.

"What the hell happened here?" Weldon said softly.

"Search the room, see what you can find," Blake replied, making for the only other door in the room. It was opposite the one they'd come in through. He peered in through a small window in the center and saw it was some kind of tiny office.

Opening the door, he looked around. There wasn't much in the office. Just a desk with a broken computer on it and a chair. Blake thought that he could, very faintly, smell weed. Well, that made enough sense. If it was his job to hang out at the bottom of the world for half a year, he'd want some primo grass to kill the time with.

Five minutes later, the men were back out in the hallway, no closer to finding what they were looking for, shoving through the debris that was blocking access. Blake really didn't want to have to go back outside if he could help it. The men got through the debris, and Blake led the way again, stepping out into what remained of the corridor. It went ahead a couple of dozen feet and terminated in a left-hand turn, the route otherwise blocked by more debris that Blake assumed they couldn't just shove their way through.

Four rooms were to the left, nothing to the right. The skeletal remains of the basic structure gave him a good view of not only the rooms, but the outdoors beyond them. The ceiling was all but gone, over the corridor and the room.

"Same as before," Blake said, his breath foaming on the air.

Without a word, the men split up and set to work. The first room appeared to be a rec room, dominated by a snowbound pool table in the center. Blake poked around, glancing at his men occasionally as they moved further on, shifting between rooms, moving in pools of flickering red light. He cleared the rec room, finding nothing among the wreckage and helped North clear the next room, which seemed to be mostly empty, just a few tables and chairs.

"Captain!" Burrows called suddenly.

"What?!" Blake replied, noting the concern he'd heard in the engineer's voice.

"You're going to want to see this!"

Blake and North had just been joining Weldon in the third room, someone's bedroom. "Stay here," he said, moving through the hole in the wall between the two rooms. Burrows was standing in the final room, a bathroom. All that was really left of it was a partial, white-tiled wall with a pair of urinals on it. Burrows was staring at them. Blake immediately saw what he was looking at. What remained in the wall was caked in frozen-over blood.

A lot of it.

"Weldon, come in here," Blake said.

"Whoa," Weldon murmured, coming up behind them.

"This isn't good," North said, following in his wake.

"Yeah...you guys find anything?" Blake asked.

"No, nothing," Weldon replied.

"Come on. Let's keep going."

The men lingered for a few seconds at the wall, then followed Blake out through the back of the bathroom. Its rear wall had been utterly destroyed in the explosions, offering a perfect exit to the rest of the base. There didn't seem to be much. To the right was another portion of the building and a single door. To the left was a huge hole in the ground and what remained of what might have been cabins or storage sheds.

Blake's flare died. He sighed and tossed it aside, regretting not bringing a flashlight along. Again, this mission struck him as oddly rushed. He moved to the door and peered in through the window, cracking open another flare.

"What do you see?" North asked.

"I'm not sure but...this might be the infirmary," Blake replied, staring at the edge of what might have been an examination table deeper in the dark room. He tried the handle, but it was locked. Sighing, he moved around to the side of the building, but saw that it was fenced off by a tall chainlink. Frowning, he turned around and stared at the huge hole.

"Come on, we'll get back here after we check out this sinkhole. Watch your step," he said.

The men replied affirmatively and they followed him carefully along the edge of the hole. They kept moving until they found a slope not so steeply angled that they wouldn't fall down and began to make their way down it.

As they did, Blake's radio crackled to life suddenly. He stopped, let the rifle hang by its sling and brought the radio to his ear.

" _This is Pierce...zzt...need help...trapped...zzt...these damned things...I need..."_

Blake hit the call button. "Pierce, this is Blake, can you hear me? Over."

Pierce began to say something but his words were lost to the static. Blake tried twice more, then cursed sharply and replaced the radio. He led the men further down the natural snow ramp to the bottom of the pit. The indention in the snow was large and misshapen. The skeletal remains of a helicopter lay half-buried in the snow, next to a cave that looked intentional. Something about it set Blake's senses on edge.

Before the cave, however, he spied what remained of a shack he wanted to investigate. It was on its side now, with large holes in the wooden walls and ceiling.

"Come on," he said, heading for the shack.

Blake ducked in through an opening and looked around the interior, making way for the others. It looked like it had been someone's bedroom. Broken pieces of furniture lay scattered across the side wall that now served as its floor. Blake started to poke through the wreckage, shivering and shifting aside pieces of wood and metal. There was what appeared to be a bed, a desk and a computer, as well as a few broken bottles of J&B Scotch.

"Found something," Burrows said.

Blake turned and walked awkward across the sideways cabin. Burrows had righted a small end table and set his discovery atop it. A tape recorder. Blake reached down and hit the play button. There was a moment of silence, then, _"I'm gonna hide this tape when I'm finished. If none of us make it, at least there'll be some kind of record. The storm's been hitting us pretty hard now for...forty eight hours. We still have nothing to go on...one other thing...I think it rips through your clothes when it takes you over. Windows founded some shredded long-johns, but they could be anybody's. We're all very tired...there's nothing I can do. Just wait. R. J. MacReady, helicopter pilot, U.S. Outpost North Thirty One."_

For several moments, there was nothing but the sound of the winds howling.

"Well, that was informative," North said.

"What the hell did he mean, 'it rips through your clothes when it takes you over'?" Weldon asked nervously.

"Dunno," Blake replied, grabbing the cassette and putting it into his backpack. "I'm sure Whitley will want to see this, though. Come on. I want to check out that cave."

Blake thought that the man, MacReady, had been drunk and hopeless as he'd made the recording. Was it just cabin fever? If this was all just a bunch of bullshit, something cooked up by a drunk, stoned crew who went bonkers waiting for the sun to come back up...But that didn't quite hold up. Why would Whitley send the Special Forces on a wild goose chase? Unless he thought it was genuine. But if he thought it was genuine, there'd be more than the badasses with guns there...Blake sighed mentally, he'd been down this road before.

He entered the cave, cracking another flare. His second to last one. He made his way slowly through the snow tunnel, his movements cautious. There was something ominous about the tunnel. He reached the end, stepping into a small, open space, and stopped.

"Whoa," he muttered.

"Holy shit...is that what I think that is?" North asked.

"Could be," Burrows murmured.

They were staring at what seemed to be a partially-constructed ship. To Blake, it didn't look like anything of human origin. If anything, it resembled a UFO. It was vaguely saucer shaped and made largely of metal plating. Several tables had been brought into the room, set up around the exterior of it. All manner of spare parts and tools littered their tops. Blake tore his gaze away from the UFO and began hunting through the tables for anything that might be useful. After a moment, his search was rewarded.

"Come on," he said, holding up a key with a small tag that read _infirmary_ attached to it. "We need to finish up and report to Whitley. He'll want to get another team out here to do a more thorough investigation."

"I'll gladly get the hell out of here," Weldon muttered, leading the way back out of the tunnel.

"You got the spooks, kid?" North asked, chuckling.

"You don't?"

North frowned. "I guess I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little freaked."

"We're in Antarctica, it's dark and cold and that might have been a spacecraft," Blake said. "We're all a little spooked. We can talk about it when we get back to base. For now, focus up."

The man gave a trio of sharp, affirmative responses.

Blake led them back out of the pit, around the curve of it and to the infirmary door. He slipped the key in the lock which, thankfully, wasn't iced over, and turned it. The door opened. Blake's flare had died on the way there.

"Someone got a flare?" he asked, not wanting to use his last one.

"I do," North said, lighting his.

The infirmary was lit in the hot red glare. Blake swept the room with his gaze, taking in several features at once. There were a trio of examination tables scattered across the room. One of them was very bloody. Several ceiling tiles had fallen onto the floor. There were cabinets and counters along the peripheral of the room, as well as what seemed to be several documents. All of this was hard to see in the flare's red glare.

Something caught Blake's eyes on the edge of the nearest examination table, the one he'd originally glimpsed from outside. With something like hope, he stepped forward and grabbed it. A flashlight, shaped almost like a faucet, built so that you could place the handle in a shirtfront pocket and the bulb would face outwards. Blake did just that, placing in his front jacket pocket, and flicked it on. A brilliant beam of white light immediately sprang into existence.

"Whoa!" Weldon cried out suddenly.

"Man, he got fucked up," North muttered.

Blake saw what they were talking about. The light had been pointing towards the darkest corner of the room. On a row of cabinets was a corpse. Not just any corpse, either. It was a man who had been apparently shot in the head, twice. Blood had sprayed all over the wall. He was shirtless and wore a pair of heavy boots and thick, green pants. What was really strange was the fact that someone, or something, had torn into his torso, exposing some of his ribs. Red and purple guts hung, frozen, from the body, over the side of the cabinets.

"Jesus Christ..." Weldon whispered.

"See what you can find out," Blake said. "Burrows, you're with me, we're going to scout ahead. North, I see some papers around. Gather them up, see if there's anything relevant."

"I'm on it," Weldon replied, snapping on some medical gloves.

"Yes, Captain," North said.

Blake led Burrows across the room, weaving in between the examination tables, eternally grateful for the flashlight. There was only a single other door in the infirmary. Pushing through it, he found a half-collapsed storage room and another small office. There was just one more door, and it led outside. Blake moved closer to the exterior door and stared out the window. He could see nothing but snow. Although, during a break in the wind, he thought he saw the hint of a structure further away, to the far left.

In the office, Blake found another tape recorder. Hoping to find some more clues, he hit the play button and listened.

" _This is Wilfred Blair, biologist at Outpost Thirty One. The Norwegian we recovered from the helicopter crash came from Dronning Maud, a Norge outpost about three miles north of our location. There were two Norwegians on the helicopter. One of them was killed by an explosion. Norris says he saw the man pull the pin on a grenade and drop it, and that's what caused the helicopter to blow. The other was shot in the eye and killed by Station Command Garry. The Norwegians were attacking...a dog. They were shooting at a dog and hit one of our own, Bennings. As far as the autopsy we did shows, there was nothing strange about the man. No drugs, no alcohol, nothing to indicate why he'd cracked, but that tends to happen down here, or so I'm told. Copper and Mac are headed up to the Norge outpost now to see if anyone is still alive..."_

North suddenly called him back.

"Coming!" Blake replied, turning off the tape and putting it into his pack.

He and Burrows moved back into the infirmary. Weldon was still looking at the body and North was staring intently at a handful of papers he'd gathered.

"What is it?" Blake asked.

"You're gonna want to read this. It's creepy," North replied.

Blake took the papers and read the first one.

 _An infected entity has the ability to fragment and survive. Every part of it is as whole._

Blake frowned. The words were printed onto the paper with very neat, laborious handwriting. Not exactly the furious scribblings of an unsound mind. The next one was stranger.

 _The Virus has the ability to replicate the original biological entity including the clothing._

The clothing...he heard MacReady's words about ripping through clothing and shredded long-johns echo coldly through his memories. He read the next piece of paper.

 _Although contact with an infected entity does not guarantee infection, there is still between a 50 – 70 percent chance of infection._

Blake's heart was hammering harder in his chest now, his pulse rising. He read the next piece of paper.

 _Although this is probably the scariest biological entity I have ever encountered, I feel that under the correct study conditions this could advance our understanding of biology greatly._

Entity? Infection?

"Jesus," Blake muttered. Some kind of sickness? "Weldon, did you find anything?" he asked, stuffing the papers into his backpack.

"No, nothing out of the ordinary," Weldon replied.

"Well, quit messing around with the body. These papers say there might be some kind of sickness going around," Blake said.

"Ugh, fantastic," Weldon muttered, stripping off the gloves and tossing them away.

"There seems to be one more structure outside. We're going to check it out, then call Whitley and have him send the hazmat boys down here. Obviously _something_ is going on and we're not enough to handle it."

Blake received no argument from the others as he led them out of the infirmary and to the rear of the base. His suspicions were correct: there was another structure. It was small and mostly destroyed, a shed or shack of some kind, maybe for storage. Either way, it was almost completely empty. The only thing occupying it was a single, lonely corpse. A black man in heavy cold weather gear with a shaved head and an empty bottle of J&B frozen to his hand. Weldon knelt by the corpse and examined it for a long moment.

"Nametag says Childs," he said. "He died of the exposure."

"Go figure," North muttered.

"He drank himself to death?" Burrows asked. "Passed out because he knew there was no rescue coming?"

"Maybe. We'll probably never know," Blake replied, pulling out his radio. "This is Blake for Colonel Whitley, come back. Over."

There was a very short pause, then Whitley responded immediately, as if he'd been impatiently waiting by the radio all this time. _"What have you got? Over."_ He sounded excited.

"The base is a wreck. Power's out and everything's frozen. We found two bodies. One of them was shot and mutilated, guts hanging out everywhere. The other was frozen, nametag says Childs. Other than that..." he hesitated.

" _Yes? What?"_ Whitley replied impatiently.

"We found what appears to be some kind of...spacecraft. And several documents making reference to some kind of infection and a virus...over."

A long pause. _"I see,"_ Whitley said finally.

"We're out of our league here, Colonel. We need the CDC or a hazmat squad or something. This isn't a job for Special Forces. Over," Blake replied.

" _Understood. I've already sent the chopper back your way. It should be there to pick you up in the same spot in about ten minutes. Out."_

As they made their way back through the ruined outpost, Blake couldn't help but let his curiosity grow. What was going on here? A ship...an infection...some kind of alien virus that had gotten out? That thought scared him. What did it do? Obviously, the results were disastrous. Unless this was just cabin fever...

Blake's radio crackled suddenly. _"This is Pierce! I need...zzt...at Dronning Ma...zzt...team is...zzt...infect...zzt..."_

Blake's heart skipped a beat as he listened.

"Pierce, is this Blake, can you hear me?!"

A pause. _"-lake!...zzt...the hell...zzt..."_

The rest was last to static.

"Shit!" Blake muttered. So Pierce's team was at Dronning Maud. And he'd said something about an infection. Something had gone wrong. By the time they got back to LZ, the chopper was on fast approach. Blake activated his radio.

"Colonel, we need to talk, over," he said.

Again, it seemed like Whitley was waiting for them. _"Yes? Did you find something else? Over."_

"No, but I've been getting partial transmissions from Pierce. He's in trouble. You sent him to the Norwegian base? How did that happen? Over." Blake asked.

" _We cut a deal with the Norwegians. They can't get anyone down here fast enough to begin investigation any time soon so we sent one of our teams to do the preliminary investigation. In return we share everything we find during our own investigations. Over."_

"What a happy world. I want to have the chopper drop me off alone at Dronning Maud. Pierce needs help, he's in trouble. Over," Blake said.

" _Negative, Blake. I need you back here. Over."_

"I understand Colonel but I'm the closest one and...well, I owe it to him. I'll send all the data we found back with my team. Over."

A pause. _"Okay, fine. Out."_

The chopper landed. Blake led the others across the snow and into the chopper. When he was inside, he went up to the cockpit.

"Dronning Maud!" he shouted to the pilot.


	3. Chapter 03: Dronning Maud

Back on a chopper again.

"You sure you don't want any backup?" North asked as they approached Dronning Maud.

"I'll be fine," Blake replied. "Take that research back to base and figure out what's going on down here."

"Affirmative...what did you mean when you said you owed it to Pierce?" North asked.

Blake hesitated a moment, not wanting to remember that. "It's a long story," he said finally.

The chopper began to land. Blake said his goodbyes and left the vehicle, ducking low and running away from it, towards a structure he'd landed near. He waited for the helicopter to finish taking off again, then straightened back up.

Before he could take a single step, his radio crackled to life. _"Blake, it's Whitley. Have you found anybody yet? Over."_

"Negative. I've just arrived. Though from what I can tell, this base is in pretty much the same shape as the last one. Over."

" _Affirmative...this little stunt of yours might have paid off. Over."_

"What do you mean? Over."

" _I received a partial transmission from Pierce. It sounds like he found some kind of research. Might be important. Over."_

"Roger that. Did he say if there were any hostiles in the area? Over."

Whitley paused. _"Negative...no hostiles...out."_ There was something off about the way he'd said that. Blake was suddenly convinced that Whitley had just lied to him. But why? That wouldn't make any sense. Colonels didn't lie to soldiers in the field. Of course, ops involving extreme weather and possible alien contacts also should be more well-planned.

He moved off, deciding to find out for himself if there were any hostiles in the area.

Blake took stock of the environment around him as the chill began to set in. Everywhere but to his left were more frozen, misty wastelands. To his immediate left was a wood and chainlink fence that walled off what had looked like a good portion of the base. There was a hole in the fence, but it spat blue and white sparks periodically. Probably not a good idea to mess with it. Surely there was another way into the base.

Blake ignored the hole and moved along the fence, towards the dark shape of a structure up ahead. He came to an open doorway, but noticed a depression in the snow a little further ways on. Ignoring the door for the moment, he moved around a pile of snow to a slope that led down into the depression. Moving carefully, as not to fall, he came across something interesting. Blood. A lot of it, frozen to the snow. It looked somewhat recent.

Another sign that this mission wasn't adding up.

Blake was glad for the flashlight. It kept both hands free and let him grab the MP-5. He flipped off the safety. If there were no hostiles in the area, then where had all that blood come from? He supposed it could have been some kind of mistake, a friendly fire...but that didn't happen too often in the Special Forces. Maybe they'd run into Norwegian survivors. Blake spied another doorway up ahead, in a lower portion of the same building.

He spied a body further on, lying inside the little niche the door resided in. Blake approached it cautiously, but saw he had nothing to worry about. The body was frozen solid. Likely one of the original inhabitants. The door was no-go, too. It looked like the roof had collapsed just beyond the doorway. A wooden beam punched through a small window in the middle of the door. Blake cursed softly, turned and began making his way back out of the depression. He stopped immediately, however, when he spied dark movement up ahead.

"Hold it!" he called, moving forward, gun ready. "Identify yourself!"

There was something wrong with the movement he glimpsed through the mist. It was far too small, almost like an animal or something. He thought he might just be seeing someone's head, their body blocked by a mound of snow, but then it was gone. Blake finished getting up out of the depression and search the immediate area.

But there was nothing.

"Shit," he muttered, wondering if he'd just seen nothing or maybe it was the snow or it was just his stressed mind playing tricks on him. God knew this place was stressful enough. He was shivering very badly now, the chill eating into him. He made a beeline for the open doorway he'd passed earlier. The storm was worsening and he'd have to start spending even less time outdoors. As soon as he stepped into an empty room, he noticed several things. The first was that the room had been hit by a fire at some point, as all the wood was warped and twisted. The second was that there was a flare set atop the only piece of furniture in the room: a big, wooden crate.

It was still burning.

They had a twenty minute lifespan, which meant that whoever had set it was very likely still around here. Someone from Alpha Team, he hoped. Blake moved past the flare and into a corridor. It veered left, then right. He passed a door that was very firmly locked and briefly considered shooting the lock off. Opting to not make any more noise than was necessary, he moved on, following the corridor as it twisted right again, then left once more. Here was another door. It was, thankfully, unlocked.

Blake opened it up and stopped dead in his tracks as he surveyed the room he'd come to. It was some kind of work area. Directly ahead of him was an L-shaped desk with a sparking computer set up atop it. In the chair wedged into the desk area, a man in a gray thermal suit sat, still partially frozen, his neck _and_ his wrists sliced open violently. Shelves, desks and crates occupied the peripheral of the room. Several heavily mutilated corpses lay scattered across the floor. One man had his head removed, another, his stomach hollowed out.

Frozen blood was everywhere.

Blake spied movement in the far left corner of the room. He raised his weapon and saw someone was crouching among some crates.

"Identify yourself!" he snapped, approaching, but lowered his gun as he saw it was a black man wearing Special Forces cold weather gear.

"It's Carter," he replied, his speech slightly slurred. He seemed to be having trouble focusing.

"What _happened?_ " Blake asked, taking in the gory state of the room.

"They attacked us. These...things. I thought they was part of the...the...wait a minute," he muttered, staring harder at Blake now. "You aren't Captain Pierce...who are you?!" he snapped. "How'd you get here?" he asked.

"My name is Blake. I'm the Captain of Delta Team. We were sent to investigate an American outpost three miles south of here. I received a distress call from Pierce and came as back up...you need medical attention," Blake replied, seeing that the man was bleeding from his stomach.

"Yeah...I saw a kit on the wall, behind you. Was going to get to it...ugh, _god,_ it hurts," he muttered. "Lost some blood."

Blake turned and spied the emergency medical kit on the wall next to the door he'd come through. Perfect. He went over to it, tore it off the wall and hurried over the Carter. Cracking it open, he took off his gloves and snapped on some medical gloves, suddenly remembering about the apparent infection going around.

"So what happened?" Blake asked as he studied the wounds. It looked like some kind of animal had clawed through his coat and into his stomach.

"These things, they attacked us...we split up. Pierce, Pace and Williams went ahead, deeper into the base. Me and Cruz were checking out this portion. Right about the time the lights came back on, I'm guessing Pace fixed the generator, they- _agh!_ "

Carter cried out as Blake poured antiseptics into the wound. "Sorry," he muttered. "Forgot to say this is gonna sting a little."

"Uh-huh," Carter grunted. "They attacked us!" he managed as Blake began bandaging the wound. "They were these little things...Cruz lost it, locked himself in the next room."

"Little things?" Blake asked, finishing up and tossing the gloves.

"Yeah, like...heads with legs," Carter replied.

Blake frowned. Carter tried to get up. "No, sit, rest. Let me look around. You need to get your strength back," he said.

Carter looked like he was going to argue, no Special Forces soldier wanted to be told to 'take it easy', especially while on a mission, but they also knew self-discipline. He nodded and sat back, resting his back against one of the crates.

"Just five minutes," he said.

"Five minutes," Blake promised as he shoved the medical kit into his backpack. It'd likely pay to have it later.

He stood up and began making a slow trek around the room. The place was a wreck, but not as bad as Outpost Thirty One. Power was on, the lights were burning bright, well, maybe not bright, but good enough to see by. He checked the shelves, the desks, finding nothing of use but a few more flares. There were two doors in the room besides the one he'd come through. One was locked down with some kind of keypad and the other led to a barren storage room with nothing useful in it. Blake finally turned his attention to a relatively intact workstation.

He spied a closed circuit television, or CCTV, which was basically just a TV hooked up to a camera somewhere nearby, a computer and an audio recorder. Blake first turned his attention to the computer. There was a message typed up on it in Norwegian. As luck would have it, he read and spoke Norwegian.

 _We're all going crazy. This thing in the ice. Don't know who is human and who isn't. Morale is low and I don't think our chances are good._

Not exactly a happy find. Blake spent a moment searching through the computer, but it looked like it either hadn't been used all that much or someone had wiped it. All he could find were a few weather reports. He spent another minute listening to the audio recording, and heard a bored Norwegian researcher drone on about the temperature, cloud formations and snowfall predictions. Figuring there might be something useful on it, he popped the tape out and put it into his backpack. Finally, he turned his attention to the CCTV.

It was on and functional, showing a scene of an iced over room. Blake grabbed a joystick and began moving the camera around in a slow circle. He spied a huge block of ice with the center carved out. Beyond that, he saw someone standing in a small alcove. Cruz, more than likely. An SF soldier who had lost it? Panicked? He'd seen it happen, but it was really, really rare. He must've seen something truly terrifying...

What the hell had Carter been going on about? Heads with legs? Blake suddenly had a vision of the small dark shape he'd seen outside. Could it be? It sounded utterly insane, totally whacked-out...but Whitley had mentioned aliens. What the hell was going on here? Blake continued to swivel the camera around until he happened on a whiteboard next to the door that was locked down. **46892** was scrawled across it.

The code to the door, he realized.

"Heads with legs?" Blake asked, turning back towards Carter.

"Yeah...I know it sounds nuts, totally nuts. But we both saw it. If you find Cruz, he'll back me up," Carter replied, slowly getting to his feet. "I feel a bit better now. I can carry on, Captain," he said.

"All right, come on. I've located Cruz, he's through here," Blake replied.

Carter joined him as he punched the code into the pad. The door chimed sharply and opened up. Blake pushed through the door and stepped out onto a wooden platform overlooking the room. He surveyed the large block of ice, a small alcove to the right and Cruz. He was coming out of the alcove, MP-5 at ready, eyes wide and wild.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Captain Blake. I'm from another team," Blake replied.

"You okay in there, Cruz?" Carter asked, coming up behind Blake.

"Carter? Shit, I thought you'd bought it...I..." he hesitated, then lowered his weapon. "I'm sorry I broke and ran," he said, his voice stained with guilt and shame.

"You scared them off," Carter replied. "And I'm still alive, so I guess we're even. Tell Blake about them."

"They were...ugh, god," he shuddered. " _So_ creepy. They were like people's decapitated heads with this weird, horrible faces on them. They had gray skin and chicken legs. There were three or four of them. They growled."

"Where did they come from?" Blake replied, trying to take the soldier's account at face value.

"No idea. They must've followed us in."

"Have you heard from Pierce or Whitley?"

Cruz shook his head. "I got a partial transmission from Pierce. He said he was in the north section of the base, talking some crazy medical shit. Other than that...I haven't heard shit from anyone."

"Fantastic. Let me try my radio," Blake replied.

"This is Blake to Whitley or Pierce. Over."

Static bled through the speaker, intermittent, and what might have been a voice. "This is Blake to anyone, do you read? Over."

More static, then nothing.

"This fucking weather," he muttered. "Okay, come on. Let's go. How did Pierce and the others get deeper into the base?"

"They went through a hole in the fence," Carter replied.

"Shit. I saw that same hole when I came in. It's electrified."

"Must be a downed line or something...it came back on when the turned back on the generator," Carter said.

"How do we get around it?" Blake asked.

"I can shut off power to that area," Carter said, looking past Cruz into the alcove. "It looks like I can do it from there."

Blake looked past Cruz as well, into the alcove, to a confused network of fuse-boxes and all manner of electronic gear.

"Be my guest," Blake said as Cruz stepped out of the way. Carter walked back into the alcove. A moment later, the lights dimmed slightly, but held, and he returned.

"Done," he said.

"You're good at your job," Blake said, leading them back out of the room. He hesitated as he came to the top of the wooden platform overlooking the area. He stared at the ice block. "Either of you know what that's about?" he asked.

"No idea," Cruz said.

Carter shrugged and shook his head.

"Fantastic, come on," Blake said, leading them out of the room. He led them back through the fresh necropolis and out into the hallway. As he took the first step into it, he heard something: a distorted kind of growl and the clack of what might have been claws on hard wood.

"Oh god," Carter moaned, "that's them! That's what they sound like!"

He brandished a pistol, an M9 that Blake hadn't noticed he'd had, and Cruz raised his MP-5. Blake readied his own. He kept going down the short length of corridor until he came to the first bend. And that's when he saw them.

For a second, it was like his brain had hiccuped, and he felt like a ship that had slipped its moors and was adrift at sea. He couldn't process what he was seeing. All he kept thinking was 'heads with legs'. They _were_ heads with legs. They had horrible, mottled gray skin and disgusting faces. They walked on two severely back-bent legs. They were growling, and when the three of them saw the three humans, they began shrieking.

"Open fire!" Blake heard himself shout.

He squeezed the trigger. So did Cruz and Carter. Gunfire filled the hallway, painful and loud. Muzzle flare turned the battle into a series of still shots. He watched as the three of them were cut down, a viscous black blood spraying across the wall behind them. Blake emptied his entire magazine, then shakily reloaded.

"Holy shit," he whispered.

"We got em," Cruz said, and started laughing. "We fucking nailed em!"

"We got them all right, what the hell are they?" Blake replied.

So this _was_ first contact. There was no doubt about it. And it was certainly hostile. It was also terrifying. No wonder Cruz and Carter had flipped out. Blake was pretty sure he would have as well. He took a deep breath and let it out.

"Come on, we need to reassemble the team and get the hell out of here," he said.

They made their way back outside, encountering nothing more, and moved along the fence until they were at the hole.

No more blue sparks.

Blake walked through, leading the others.


	4. Chapter 04: Infection

The storm was worsening.

Blake had led the others through the hole in the fence and deeper into the base. For a moment, he was worried that he'd be lost in the blowing snow and curling mist, but before long, he picked up on a string of light poles that burned a brilliant, vivid blue through the snow. He knew these poles were strung throughout the base, meant to guide the base personnel between structures in bad weather. Now he was following this string of lights, contemplating the horrors he had witnessed so far. They were beginning to get to him.

Blake had seen, and even done, a lot of nasty things in his life. It kind of went with the territory. He'd shot and killed men before, dozens of them. He'd seen the result of brutal interrogation techniques, outright torture, and had smelled the awful reek of flash-fried human flesh after witnessing a firebombing of a US embassy once. The horrors men could visit upon one another was something that had left him haunted, likely to the end of his days. He'd given up whatever religion he might have had within his first year in SF.

But this...this was something else entirely. The mutilated bodies down here didn't even make sense. And then there was the heads with legs, the way they had scuttled rapidly across the ground when they'd started coming for him. And the deep, discordant growling. Could they be some kind of animal? Something everyone had just missed until now, native only to Antarctic? It seemed very vaguely possible. It wasn't like the seventh continent was the most explored. But no, those faces had been _human_.

What could it mean?

How did it tie in with the reports of aliens?

Something tall and thin began to appear out of the mist. Blake recognized it immediately: a transmitter tower. If they could get to the radio room of this base, they might be able to get a call out to Whitley, get some kind of extraction. The situation was definitely FUBAR enough to for it. At the base of the tower was a shack.

A place to get out of the cold.

"Come on!" Blake said, struggling to be heard over the shrieking of the winds. "There's a structure up ahead!"

They made tracks through the snow, passing a frozen-over corpse leaned up against the front of the wooden shed, then opened it up. On approach, Blake noticed three additional lines of blue-lit poles leading away from the shed. So this was some kind of central nexus for this area of the base. He hurried inside, taking a quick look around. There wasn't much in the shack. Just a few crates, both metal and wooden, and a table.

It was a windbreak, at least, and kind of warm. Carter and Cruz were shivering and Cruz had closed the door behind them. Suddenly, Blake was paranoid about being in the same room as the two of them. He didn't know why, there was no reason. If there was anyone he trusted, it was Special Forces guys. On the other hand, he was still alive because he listened to his instincts. He took a moment to warm up.

"Okay, do either of you know the layout of the base?" he asked.

Both shook their heads.

Blake sighed. "Great. So that means we got three choices." He considered it for a moment. "We'll go ahead and see where that takes us."

Both of them nodded, seemingly willing to go along with whatever he said. Blake found it comforting to know that even in a hostile environment, even while facing down apparent monsters, the chain of command still meant something. Blake led the way back outside, and immediately heard a familiar growling.

"Hostiles!" Cruz screamed from behind him.

Blake had been facing the direction he intended to go after doing a quick sweep of the area. He spun around and from around the side of the cabin came a half dozen more of the little heads with legs. They were scuttling across the ice towards them, looking like sentient malignant tumors given legs. A word popped into Blake's head as he raised his MP-5. Scuttler. That's what they were to be named, at least in his head from now on: Scuttlers.

Blake sidestepped as he opened fire, spraying them down with hot lead. He heard another MP-5 open up, the staccato rattling of machine gunfire ripping through the air as Cruz joined him outside. The pair of them were more clinical this time, more detached, like soldiers again. They managed to pick off the creatures without expending an entire magazine of ammo, instead picking their targets and spraying tar-like black blood across the snowy ground. When the final one fell, the three of them stood there for a moment, waiting.

Nothing else happened.

"Come on," Blake said.

They turned and hurriedly made their way alongside the string of light poles. Another structure appeared from the mist. An L shaped cabin. Blake walked up to the front door and opened it up. He kept his MP-5 raised, ready for anything as he stepped inside.

"Watch my six," he muttered.

"Affirmative," Cruz replied just as softly.

He came into an entryway with a coat-rack and space heater mounted on the walls, and a desk with several boxes stacked atop it to the left. There was a door in the front wall, next to the desk, and a large blood smear on the floor. Blake thought he could hear someone moving deeper in. At least the lights were on. It was warmer, too.

Blake came into the larger, L-shaped room. He moved past stacks of crates, more tables and desks and shelves, and came around the turn in the room.

Someone was waiting for him.

Pierce.

"Stay back!" he snapped. He was holding a flamethrower, his finger on the trigger. Slowly, Blake lowered his MP-5.

"Stand down," he said, as much to Pierce as to Carter and Cruz. "Pierce...what happened?"

"Don't come another step closer, _any_ of you, or I'll fry all your asses," he growled.

"Pierce, look, I'm sorry about what happened in Iran but-"

"That's not what this is about!" he said, still covering them with the big, black muzzle of the flamethrower. "There's an infection going around. The dug something up out of the ice, these Norwegian scientists. An alien. It can spread. If it gets inside of you, it takes you over, and then you aren't human anymore," Pierce said, speaking rapidly.

Blake felt his whole body go cold. What he was saying linked up with some of the reports had said.

 _Every part is a whole._

 _We don't know who is human and who isn't._

"What do you mean?" Blake asked.

"I mean that you, Carter, Cruz, _anyone_ else could be an alien," Pierce replied.

"I know I'm not, and if they were infected, don't you think it'd be obvious? Have you seen the little ones? The heads on legs?" Blake asked.

"Yeah, I've seen 'em. But that's the thing. You word isn't shit, Captain. Someone who's infected, someone who has become one of those aliens, they looked and walk and talk just like they normally would," Pierce explained.

"So...how do you tell?" Blake asked, terrified at the prospect. He suddenly remembered a movie he'd seen a few years ago, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In the movie, people all over Earth were being killed and replaced by alien duplicates.

Jesus, what a fucking nightmare of a first contact situation.

"There's a blood test," Pierce said. "I read in the reports that they rigged up some kits. One of the scientists stashed some over by the kennel. It's in this area. I was just going to go get them, but then I heard your gunfire."

"Fine, come with us, we'll all go get them," Blake replied.

"No. You three go. Come back with the test kits...or don't come back at all."

"We need to work together!" Blake snapped, taking a step forward.

Pierce's finger tightened ever so slightly on the trigger of the flamethrower. "Blake...go get the kits. Prove to me you're human, and I'll do whatever the hell you want to get out of this mess."

Blake sighed, seeing that Pierce wasn't going to back down. He studied the man, tried to see some kind of difference, some clue that he was still human, still the man with whom he'd worked years ago. He was still the same tanned, lithely muscled man with buzzed blonde hair and angry green eyes. Still wouldn't give an inch when he thought he was right. He looked worse now, though. Haunted, almost hollow, empty inside.

A sign of infection or a sign of a man who's had too much taken from him by life?

"We'll get the tests," Blake said finally.

He knew that Pierce was serious. When they'd last parted company, Pierce had nearly killed him for what Blake had done. Even if Blake's sin had been accidental, Pierce wouldn't hear any of it. He vowed to kill Blake if he ever saw him again, that he'd never forgive him. But here he was, willing to work with Blake if only he could prove that he was human. Obviously, Pierce was scared of the infection. And he should be.

If what he was saying was true...then Blake didn't know how they were going to get out of this situation alive.

"Move out," he said, turning and facing the others.

He led them back out into the cold. They returned to the central shack and consider their options. One light string led right, the other left. Neither revealed a clue as to what was where. Blake sighed, his breath foaming on the air, and broke left.

He considered the bomb that Pierce had dropped in his lap. He didn't think the man was nuts, nor did he honestly think the scientists at this place were nuts. There were too many puzzle pieces matching up. They'd dug something up from the ice...he remembered that big block of ice with a huge piece of the middle missing. All the talk of infection and infected entities and the trust issues. For a moment, he was surprised by how easily all of this was coming to him, but he supposed it made enough sense. Really, it was the movie reference that did it.

His notion of trust, of not wanting to be in the same room with Carter and Cruz, suddenly made sense. And Carter had been attacked by those Scuttlers...

"So Pierce is nuts, right?" Cruz asked cautiously as they followed the light poles.

"Course he is," Carter replied. "Captain's lost it. Good thing we've got a new Captain now that's kept his head. What are we going to do about him, Blake?"

"We'll try to find his test kits and see if we can't prove our humanity to him," Blake replied.

"And if we can't?" Cruz asked.

"Then we might have to take him out."

Both men seemed okay with that. Something that made Blake even more paranoid. His instincts were telling him to trust Pierce out of the three of the SF men he had with him. The other two were totally cool with blowing away their commanding officer. Not a good sign. Another structure appeared out of the mist, another shack.

The front door was open. Blake kept his MP-5 ready as he stepped through. There wasn't much inside the cabin, just a stack of wooden crates and a table with what looked like a weapons case on it. He spent a moment poking through the crates, found nothing but random bits of supplies, and turned his attention to the case.

Popping it open, he was surprised to find a flamethrower inside. Same model as Pierce's. He was tempted to leave it, he didn't need another heavy weapon slowing him down, but something made him reconsider. Having the ability to make fire in an environment like Antarctica made sense. He finally took it and the pair of fuel canisters packed up with it. He loaded one of them into the flamethrower and slung it over his neck.

"A flamethrower?" Cruz asked.

"Figured it might come in handy," Blake replied.

He noticed both men looked slightly nervous and almost commented on it, but decided to let it slide for the moment.

"Come on, these obviously aren't the kennels."

They made their way back outside and along the light poles to the central shed. Only one way left to go now. Blake hoped that these test kits weren't just bullshit, some miracle test dreamed up by a half-crazy survivor of whatever had happened here. As they approached the final section of this area, more structures appeared out of the mist. The first things that Blake could see were another intact shed and a half-collapsed structure that had wire-mesh fencing inside. What must have been one of the kennels. He felt a bit of relief.

As he approached the half-collapsed kennel, he heard an unfortunately familiar growl. Turning, he raised his weapon, hunting for the threat. Finally, he saw it. They were on the roof of the shed. "Contact!" he shouted, aiming up.

He managed to peg the first one with three shots, but three more came cascading over the side, hopping down to the ground apparently without injury. Carter took out one, Blake and Cruz eliminated the other two.

Blake quickly reloaded his MP-5.

"What the hell _are_ these things?" Carter muttered.

"I'd like to know where they're coming from," Blake replied. "Watch my back."

He wanted to send them to check out the cabin, but...if they weren't human, and the test was real, and they found it, they'd destroy it. Hell, they'd probably destroy it on the off chance that it _might_ work now that they knew they had the green light to kill the only person who didn't trust them. Unless Blake was being paranoid, there was no infection and this was just a case of mass hysteria. Or, even if there was, they might be infected.

What if he was?

Blake briefly ceased his search of the kennel at that thought. How would he know? He still felt like himself. What were the symptoms, the signs? He made himself keep looking, but after another three frigid minutes, he found nothing. Fortunately, there appeared to be another kennel behind this one. Before he went there, however, he took the time to check out the shed. All he managed to locate there was another canister of fuel, which he pocketed. Finally, he led the other two around to the entrance of the final kennel.

"That looks promising," he said, spying another weapons case at the back of the room. Hurrying over to it, Blake crouched and popped it open. Inside were three devices. They resembles pistols, with the barrel being an empty glass tube, the muzzle being a needle and the magazine being a tiny container of some kind of blue liquid.

"Weird," he muttered, then put them into his backpack. "Let's move out!"

* * *

Pierce was still waiting for them back at the cabin.

"You get the kit?" he asked, still covering them with this flamethrower.

"Yeah, three of them," Blake replied.

"Fantastic," Pierce muttered. "Three kits, four of us. You go first, Blake."

"Fine," he replied, pulling the kits of out his backpack. He set down two of them on a table in the room, then brought the third one up to his arm, jabbed it in and squeezed the trigger. "Now I'm going to show you what I already know."

"How's it work?" Carter asked.

"There's a chemical in there, some kind of cleaning agent, that reacts with the blood. If there's no reaction, you're fine. If there is, well..." He raised his flamethrower for emphasis.

Blake watched the kit take a sample of his blood, then raised it up. The blue liquid was introduced into the main glass cylinder, mixing with the blood. A long moment passed. There was no reaction. Blake sighed gently and tossed away the kit.

"Satisfied?" he asked.

"Yeah," Pierce replied. "Carter now."

"Wait a minute," Carter said, taking a step back.

"Come on, it doesn't hurt that much," Blake replied.

"Ugh, fine...hate needles," he muttered.

Blake stuck it into his arm and squeezed the trigger. He watched the blue mix with the blood, and then dropped the kit as it began vibrating violently. There was a high-pitched shriek as the kit hit the floor, then, a second later, the glass burst open. Not from the impact, but from what appeared to be the actual blood trying to escape.

 _Every piece is a whole_.

"Holy shit!" Blake cried.

"Get back!" Pierce screamed.

Carter had lost all expression on his face. He began to vibrating violently, trembling as though he was having a seizure. And his face, it was...changing, somehow. It looked like something was moving just beneath his skin, which had taken on an oddly liquid texture. Abruptly, the skin on his face fell away. Blake cried out, taking several steps back. Skull and muscle tissue was exposed. Abruptly, the sleeves of his coat burst open, revealing more blood and skin sloughing off. His hands twisted and seemed to be melting.

His fingers came together and formed some kind of claw, while his mouth was widening, elongating. It was about this time that he realized Cruz wasn't running. In fact, he wasn't doing anything. He was just standing there.

Then he began to vibrate as well.

"They're both infected!" Blake screamed.

"Shoot them!" Pierce replied.

Blake opened fire, hosing them down with bullets while Pierce edged closer with his flamethrower. Black-red blood sprayed across the area and the Carter-Thing stumbled while Cruz continued to transform into a horrible abomination. Pierce came within range, leveled the flamethrower at them and let them have it. He bathed them in a spray of flames. Both of them lit up like torches immediately. Blake emptied his magazine and hastily reloaded. Carter collapsed in a flaming heap while Cruz ran blindly around the cabin until he did the same thing.

"What the _fuck_ was that!?" Blake cried, his pulse racing.

"The infection," Pierce replied, his voice trembling. "God, I didn't think the reaction would so...violent. The reports said that whenever an infected entity was outed or revealed, it would...burst out. It also said that the only way to kill them was fire...I see you grabbed a flamethrower."

"Yeah. I saw you had one, figured you had one for a reason."

Pierce grinned grimly. "You always were smart, Blake."

"Your turn," Blake said, leveling the MP-5 at him.

"Whoa, okay...fair enough," Pierce replied.

He let his flamethrower hang by its sling and slowly approached the table where the final test kit resided. Picking it up, he extracted some of his blood and held up the kit. The blue mixed with the red, and nothing happened.

Blake let out a sigh. "Thank god, I'd hate to be alone down here," he said. Then he paused. "Now what?" he muttered.

"Now, we go find Pace and Williams, give _them_ the test, then get into the radio room and call for an extraction and find out some way to put a quarantine on this whole goddamned continent," Pierce replied.

"Good idea. If this ever got out into the mainland..." he trailed off.

"Let's go."


	5. Chapter 05: Trust

"Pierce!"

The storm was definitely here. Wind blew the snow into an almost unnavigable mess of white and gray blur, swirling around him chaotically.

"Pierce!" Blake shouted into the storm, cupping his hands, letting his rifle hang by its sling.

Nothing. He could see or hear nothing but the maelstrom of snow engulfing him. He began walking again. They'd been making their way to the final section of the base, what Pierce had described as an area that housed the bedrooms, mess hall and communications. That last part had got Blake's attention as they'd walked away from the cabin, into the storm. He'd also said that he'd sent Williams and Pace, Alpha Team's sole medic and secondary engineer, to that portion of the base in search of survivors and information.

Blake had just been processing that, preparing himself for the mission ahead, his mind reeling from not only the fact that there was life beyond humanity and Earth, and that not only was it hostile, it was _also_ ridiculously dangerous.

And then Pierce was just gone.

Lost behind him in the storm.

Blake walked on, cursing the lack light poles. They'd run out at some point. Blake was afraid that the creatures might have somehow disabled them or removed them, which would indicate higher-level thinking. They certainly seemed to have the ability to fool other people into thinking they were human. Blake had sure been fooled. But what if they didn't _know_ they were infected? What if it had gotten inside of them and they couldn't even tell? Or what if if was kind of autonomous? They infected the body and got access to the memory, using it to continue functioning as the human they had once been before...

Blake heard something land nearby and it sent his combat instincts into overdrive. He dove away from the sound and rolled several times. A few seconds later, an explosion erupted. A grenade. Blake scrambled to his feet, MP-5 in hand.

"Who goes there?!" he called.

There was a pause. Up ahead, he could see the faintest outlines of a tall tower.

"Who-who is that!?" a familiar voice called out. Blake saw someone standing atop the tower, poised to throw something else. Another grenade.

"Captain John Blake, Special Forces!" Blake screamed, desperate to be heard over the shrieking of the winds.

"Blake!? What the hell are you doing down here?!" the voice called back.

"I'm coming up! Don't throw anymore damned grenades!"

"Okay! Hurry up!"

Blake kicked through the snow, shaking his head. He'd placed the voice. It was Paul Pace. They'd served together for a mission in Africa. The man was from Alabama, and sounded like it. His voice was thick with southern accent. He was technically a genius...in all things engineering. He could fix practically anything, but in almost any other aspect of life, he was kind of useless. He'd painted a whole sad story for Blake during their time together: two mortgages on his house, insane credit card debt, two failed marriages, three kids that hated him. In a way, it helped him focus almost the entirety on his life on fixing things.

Blake made his way up a pair of ramps, pushing through the winds and snow. As soon as he reached the top, Pace turned away and headed into the room that sat at the tower's top. It was, at least, out of the cold. Blake took a quick look around the room, finding nothing but a bunch of tables set up along the peripheral of the room. All manner of gear and equipment, as well as recreational paraphernalia, was scattered along the tabletops. Paperbacks, a coffeemaker, a television, VCR, stack of tapes with handwritten labels, (they mostly looked like tapes of the old Batman series with Adam West, oddly enough,) and an Atari with a copy of Pitfall!.

"What the hell happened?" Blake asked. "What was that all about?"

"I-I'm sorry," Pace replied. "I've just been so freaked out ever since Williams and me got separated. In the storm. I found this place. We got attacked by...something. I don't know _what_ it was...it wasn't a person, I know that much."

"An alien? A monster?" Blake asked.

Pace nodded slowly. "Yeah...I think so. Whitley said...we might be going up against something not normal. I didn't think it'd be this crazy."

"So where's Williams?" Blake asked, sorting through the mess on the tabletops, looking for something useful.

"I don't know," Pace replied.

Blake sighed. "Look, Pierce is missing. I came from an American outpost not far from here when I got some partial transmissions from Pierce."

"What about the others? Carter? Cruz?"

Blake shook his head. "They're dead."

"What?!"

Blake finished his search and turned, fixing Pace with an intense stare. He didn't have any more test kits left. He spent the next five minutes bringing Pace up to speed, hoping that he could break through the man's general malaise and drill in the concept of trust and infection. By the time he was finished, Pace was silent for a few seconds, his expression unchanging.

"So anyone could be an alien?" he asked.

Relief flooded him. "Yes."

"You mean...you could?" he asked, taking a step back. "And I'd have no way to tell?"

Blake sighed and nodded. "Basically, yeah. The only thing that works is those test kits. So we'll need to find some more. And we need to find Williams, Pierce and a working radio. We need a transmitter tower to break through this storm."

"No guarantee that'll work," Pace said.

Blake sighed. "Great. Well, come on. How are you on ammo?"

"I've got one mag in the gun, three to spare."

"A sidearm?" Blake replied.

Pace shook his head. "They didn't want us going into a Norwegian outpost too heavily armed."

"Okay. Give me two magazines," Blake replied.

"I...okay," Pace replied.

He reached into his pocket and extracted a pair of magazines. He began to pass them to Blake, then hesitated. Finally, he placed them on a table and stepped back. It was then that Blake realized what was happening. Pace never had a problem following orders, he just had a problem with trust now. Good. Blake thanked the man and pocketed the spare magazines.

"Come on, let's search the rest of the base for Williams and Pierce."

"I've got your back," Pace replied.

That was another thing that was great about Pace, he was very brave. Blake exited the room, making his way back down the ramps. He noticed Pace was keeping his distance. Again, good. He didn't trust the man at all, because he might not be a man. They both reached the ground. Their boots crunched through snow as they followed another short string of blue light poles. They passed an empty, open-faced shed that resembled a bus stop station. The main entrance to this portion of the base awaited them dead ahead, beyond it.

Blake led Pace into the building. Immediately to their left was a stack of frosty metal crates, blocking off a corridor. To the left were a handful of barrels and more crates. Between them, ahead, was the only other door in the area. Blake pushed it open with the barrel of his gun, sweeping the room beyond quickly with his gaze. It was a rec room. A random handful of images came to him: a bloodied pool table dominated the center of the room, a door to his immediate right, blue-white sparks spitting from a broken arcade cabinet, a pair of barren shelves nailed to the wall, a couch, a handful of bodies. None of these facts, however, took precedent.

Because there were close to a dozen Scuttlers scattered across the room. Two on the couch, four on the pool table, the rest on the floor.

"Pace!" Blake shouted. "Fire at will!"

He stepped to the side, allowing Pace access to the doorway, while opening fire on those atop the pool table. Pace began spraying the others, hosing them down with red, hot lead. Blake emptied half the magazine, spraying black gore across the pool table and mowing down four of the bastards. He turned the gun on another two advancing towards him, growling malignantly, and reduced them to another pair of corpses.

Pace finished off the rest. Both men waited a moment, then, when it was clear the battle was over, at least for now, they reloaded. Blake began moving around the room, first stopping by the door he'd noticed to his right. There was a window in it. Blake felt his hopes rise as he spied a mess of what appeared to be communications gear within. He tried the handle. It was locked tightly. Muttering a curse, he raised his MP-5, then hesitated.

He didn't want to risk hurting the gear. It was very likely their only ticket out of there. He tried to look for other ways in, but there didn't seem to be any. Sighing, Blake turned away from it. There were another two doors across the room.

Well, less doors and more openings.

"Everything okay?" Pace asked.

"Yeah. Found the radio room. It's locked," Blake replied.

"Great," Pace muttered.

"Come on."

They moved across the ruin of the rec room, first opting to go left. It led to a corridor that had two dead-ends. The first led to another exterior exit that was blocked off by stacked up crates, the other just wound back to the stack of crates Blake had first encountered when he stepped into the building. As he began to make his way back, Pace suddenly gasped and took a step back, staring over his shoulder, past him, his eyes stricken.

Blake spun around, finding himself staring out a window in a misty sea of snow. _Something_ , some dark, twisted shape, was moving beyond it, stalking awkwardly past. Blake raised his rifle, but held his trigger finger, trying to figure out what the hell he was looking it. It didn't move like a human. It didn't move like _anything_ he'd seen before.

Then it was gone, disappeared into the storm.

"What the _hell_ was that?" Pace whispered, his voice trembling.

"I...I don't know, come on," Blake replied. "We need to find the others."

They hurried back to the only other place left to go. It led to two doors, one to the left, one ahead. Blake moved to the one that led ahead. He pushed through it, stepping into the mess hall. Another gruesome scene of death and destruction. Ahead of them was a group of tables and chairs in great disarray, several of them bloodied and flipped over. There was only a single body in view, on the floor, but it was severely mutilated. Huge chunks of skin were missing, exposed musculature and bone. It turned even Blake's stomach.

"Jesus," he muttered.

"Ugly," Pace replied. "Poor bastard."

Blake's head snapped up as he thought he heard something, like someone shifting slightly. He waited a moment, then heard it again, followed by what he thought might have been breathing. It seemed to be coming from behind a stack of crates across the room, ahead of them. He made quick hand motions to Pace, who responded affirmatively.

They began moving across the room, covering the crates with their MP-5s.

"Come out from back there!" he called.

A pause, then movement. A pale man with wide eyes and a brown crew cut wielding a flamethrower stepped out from behind the crates. He was trembling with adrenaline-fueled fear, covering them both with the weapon.

This must have been Williams.

"Stay the hell away from me, I'm warning you!" he snapped.

"Williams, it's me," Pace said.

"I'm Captain Blake from Delta Team. Look, Carter and Cruz are dead, Pierce is missing and I need to get into the radio room...you wouldn't happen to have access, would you?" Blake asked.

"A Captain...bullshit," Williams growled.

"He is, Williams, we served together before this," Pace said.

"Whatever. It doesn't matter...yeah, I got access. But I found some research, got some of Pierce's transmissions. I know about the infection, how both of you could be infected..."

"Williams, if we were both infected, we'd just attack you," Blake said.

"I got _this,_ " Williams replied, hefting the flamethrower.

"We could just shoot you," Pace said.

"Back off...way off," Williams replied, his finger tightening on the trigger.

"Okay, okay...fine," Blake said, taking a step back.

"Look, even if you could prove to me you weren't infected, it doesn't matter. There's those...things, crawling around out there, the big ones...Walkers," Williams said, fear stealing into his voice. "You kill them...I'll get us into the radio room."

"Okay, fine, we'll deal with them," Blake replied.

He led Pace to the final portion of the room, a kitchen area behind a serving line. Something glinted on one of the counters, inside a case lined with padding. Blake felt his heart begin to race with hope. He hurried over to it and confirmed that yes, there were two test kits there. He let his gun hang and grabbed one.

"Hey, Williams," he said, glancing at the man over the serving line, tucked away in his corner. "Did Pierce mention these?"

"...yeah," Williams replied reluctantly. "That's a test kit. It's the only way to prove who's human," he said slowly.

"Watch this," Blake said, then looked at Pace. "Both of you."

He took some of his blood and held the kit up. Pace tensed, taking a step back, but after a long moment of nothing, he relaxed and lowered his weapon.

"So, you're human," Pace said. "Good to know."

"Your turn," Blake replied.

"Okay...but what about him?" Pace asked. "What about Williams?"

"We've only got the one now and you're the one that's coming with me. I don't need to be fighting...Walkers _and_ worrying about you," Blake replied.

"Makes sense," Pace said.

He stuck the needle in his arm, pulled the trigger. The container filled with blood, then began to mix. Blake held his flamethrower, ready for another violent reaction. But there was nothing. Pace was Pace. Blake relaxed.

"Thank god," he whispered.

"Feel like joining us now, Williams?" Pace asked, tossing away the kit.

"No way!" he snapped. "You're human, that's great, I'm glad. But I...I'm not going out there, not with those...those _things_ out there!"

"Okay, fine," Blake said, hefting the flamethrower. "I'll deal with it, and then after that, I am _ordering_ you to open that goddamned comms room door and help me find Pierce."

"Fine," Williams replied. "You got it."

"Come on," Blake said, leading Pace back out of the kitchen, feeling a bit better about his predicament. As he prepared to retrace his steps and explore the path yet gone, a computer monitor caught his attention. It was to the right of the entryway, on a desk, something in Norwegian typed out on it. A report.

 _Lost contact with the medi-center today. We sent a team up to investigate but then lost contact with them in the storm. They were due to check in over five hours ago but there is no way I'm going to send anyone else out there in this weather._

Medi-center? Blake realized he hadn't come across an infirmary at the base. It must be a detached structure. That seemed strange. He turned away from the computer and made his way back to that door he hadn't opened back out in the corridor. As he approached it, a huge dent appeared.

"Whoa!" Pace cried, stopping dead and raising his rifle.

Another dent appeared. "Holy shit," Blake whispered, getting his flamethrower ready.

A third dent appeared, then there was a long pause...then the door exploded outwards in a spray of debris and pieces of paneling. A nightmarish monstrosity, worse than anything he had seen so far, tore through the wreckage, roaring furiously as it stepped into the corridor. It only vaguely resembled a human being, in the sense that it had a head, a torso, two arms and two legs. It also had a human torso growing out of its back like a tail. Its 'torso' was an elongated, exposed ribcage and several strands of bloody meat keeping its legs attached to the torso. Both of its arms ended in long, twisted claws and its head was split open, with another, narrower head sprouting out of it. The second head was nothing but a mouth and teeth.

"Open fire! _Open fire!_ " Blake screamed as he squeezed the trigger.

A cone of orange flame shot out of the muzzle of the flamethrower, lighting up the creature. At the same time, Pace opened fire, spraying the monster down with gunfire, splattering flaming, black gore all over the walls. The monster, the Walker, as Williams had called it, began stumbling around, thrashing, burning.

Within a few more seconds it collapsed to the floor, a burning heap of flesh and bone.

"Good _god,_ " Blake muttered, staring at it.

If they could get this twisted, this horrifying...then where was the line drawn? They both stood there for a long moment, maybe waiting for it to get up, or for another one to show up. But there was nothing. They moved on, stepping around the body, giving it a with berth, and made their way through the broken-down door into the next room.

They'd come into someone's bedroom. A bed, a desk and a dresser occupied the area to the right, in plain and open view to the rest of the room. The left led around a wall to another portion of the area. Blake supposed there was no privacy down at the south pole. He'd lived in similar conditions most of his life. Privacy was a thing that you tended to shrug off when your life consisted of zooming from one corner of the globe to the next, murdering bad guys with guns, happy to be able to catch a few hours sleep or a quiet place to crap, let alone it being by yourself. You were just thankful for the opportunity to sleep, eat or shit at _all_.

Maybe there was a similar mentality down here at the end of the world, a sense of community discovered only when the rest of civilization fell away and your only connection with the rest of the world was a radio that only worked occasionally.

Blake realized his mind was wandering, probably trying to avoid thinking of the nightmarish horror he had just put down.

There was nothing worth looking at in the bedroom, just a few pictures of a cute girl with short black hair, so Blake led Pace around the wall, through the opening. There was an almost identical bedroom on the other side, this one a little more tucked away. He found another door at the back of the room and made for it, but stopped as he heard something moving behind it.

"Pace," he began, then a huge dent appeared in the door.

This time, they were more ready. As soon as they beast burst through the door, Pace opened fire with his MP-5 and Blake hosed the beast down with more flames, emptying what remained of the fuel canister in the murder attempt. He was surprised to see that it was almost an exact copy of the one they'd just put down.

What the hell did that mean?

When it was dead, its wretched squealing finally silent, Blake hastily unscrewed the spent canister and screwed in a new one.

"Two down," Pace said.

"Yeah, but how many more to go?" Blake replied. "I guess we'll at least finish clearing the structure. If there are any outside, well...Williams will hopefully see reason."

"And if not?" Pace asked.

Blake hesitated. "I don't know...I'm reluctant to force the issue, but if I have to, well...part of this job is making the hard choices."

"Yeah, ain't that the truth?" Pace muttered.

They moved cautiously through the next broken-down door into another area. It didn't take Blake long to realize this was the final portion of the base. He checked out four more bedroom areas and an office, finding nothing of use, just more bodies and the cold of Antarctica seeping in through the walls and the windows.

Blake and Pace made their way back through the ruined, derelict base to the mess hall and Williams.

"You got all of them?" he asked.

"We got two of them," Blake replied. "I didn't see anymore."

Williams hesitated, looked at the floor for a minute, seemed to be considering something. Blake didn't like this. What happened to the damned chain of command? Deals. He was having to make deals with men who, in any other situation, would have said 'yes Captain!' and that would have been the end of it. Of course, now there was a new aspect of trust.

Who was human? Who was one of these things?

"Okay," he said finally, "okay, I'll come with you, let you into the radio room."

"Good," Blake replied, stepping back, not quite keeping Williams covered with his flamethrower but not quite lowering it either.

Williams came out from behind his boxes. He led the way out of the mess hall and through the base, to the radio room door. Williams fished around in his pocket for a moment, finally coming up with a key.

"I don't suppose you've seen Pierce," Blake said.

"I saw him," Williams replied, unlocking the door and opening.

"What?! When? Where?" Blake demanded.

"Radio room is clear," Williams said with a sweep of his flamethrower. It sounded almost like an automaton saying it, but Blake knew that was just a side effect of being in the military for so long. There were some phrases you said so many times, hundreds if not thousands, that it eventually became automatic. "I saw him when I was in the mess hall. Maybe ten minutes before you two showed up. He ran right through the building, left through the door in the back. He sounded really upset, cursing to himself, holding his arm."

"Why didn't you tell me? What didn't you try to stop him?" Blake said, trying to reign in his anger. Williams was being a shitty soldier today.

"You didn't ask and he could've been infected! Besides, he was so jittery he might have shot me out of surprise!"

Blake sighed. They _were_ good points he supposed. "Fine." He looked around the radio room. It looked like shit. Most of the gear was sparking or smoking, a lot of it looked smashed. He sighed heavily. "Pace, see what you can do."

"On it," Pace replied.

He set to work on the gear. Cold minutes ticked by while Blake and Williams stood at opposite ends of the room, waiting it out. After several moments of uncomfortable silence, Pace finally sat back from the radio gear.

"We're screwed," he declared.

"How bad?" Blake asked.

"Bad enough that I wouldn't be able to fix this without an assistant and two days time, and a lot of spare parts and tools that I'm not sure they have around here."

"Great?! Now what!?" Williams demanded, his voice cracking slightly.

"Relax. There's a medical center not far from here. I'm sure they'll have a radio, too. Maybe we can use theirs," Blake replied.

"And if not? If it's broken too?"

"Let's cross that road when we come to it, soldier," Blake replied, staring hard at Williams. He could tell the man was close to panic.

Williams stared back at him, opened his mouth to say something else, to give more voice to his rising panic, but then he stopped, seemed to remember who he was, _what_ he was, a medic in the Special Forces, and he stopped, reigned in control of himself.

"I guess we will," he said. "I'm ready when you are, Captain."

"Good. Let's go find that medical center."


	6. Chapter 06: The Medi-Center

Blake had never felt more vulnerable.

He felt lucky enough to have found a pole of aquamarine lights leading away from Dronning Maud, into the worsening storm. Before leaving the Norwegian camp, Blake had made Pace and Williams try their radios for nearly five minutes, while he tried his, to get a message out to Whitley. But it was no use, there was nothing but static for them. Blake had a deeper concern: even if they could get a call through, there was no way a chopper could get out here. They were stuck. But he had to try, he had to get the data through.

Now, as he marched along the snow, leading the way, he occasionally glanced back over his shoulder, making sure he hadn't lost Pace or Williams in the snow. They were always back there, though they kept their distances, from him and each other. Well, more Williams than Pace. He was the only one they weren't sure about. Blake found himself wondering why the hell they'd keep an intensive care medical center as a detached portion of the base, this far away, in freaking Antarctica, but it didn't matter.

All that mattered was that this was their reality. The 'why' of it didn't exactly measure up on the list of important information at the moment. Up ahead, the dark, angular shapes of a building were slowly appearing. Blake felt an immense relief flood through him. He'd been worrying it'd be too far away, he was already numb in his hands and feet. It was ridiculously, genuinely, utterly _cold_ down here. Better yet, there were _lights_ on in the building.

"Come on! We're almost there!" Blake called.

"Thank _god,_ " Pace moaned.

They hurried across the snow and hustled up the ice-resistant steps to the main entrance. He hadn't seen anyone moving in the windows as he approached, but now he was dangerously cold and didn't care if there was something in there. He opened up the door and stepped in, making room for Pace and Williams as he scanned the room he'd come to. He'd opted into using the flamethrower, letting the MP-5 hang by its sling.

The room definitely showed signs of wear and tear. Death, murder and brutal combat had already been visited upon the medi-center. The central room of the small outpost seemed to be where all the main work took place. A pair of examination tables dominated the center of the room, though one of them had been flipped over. Along the peripheral of the room were a pair of cold storage units and a large, glass-walled medical cabinet stuffed with all manner of surgical tools, supplies and medicine. The front windows were broken out, letting a bad chill into the room, and someone had tried, and failed, to cover them up with a pair of wooden tables. There were three other doors in the room, one on each wall, and windows looking into some of the rooms

There was nothing immediately dangerous in the first room, so Blake gave a quick order to shut the door behind them.

"Let's take this slow," he said.

"Fine by me," Williams replied.

Blake walked over to the nearest window, which was directly to the left of the front door. It offered a grim view into a small storage room. It was very dark in the room, and, Blake realized suddenly, covered in blood and gore. He shined his flashlight in, feeling his stomach turn over. There were body parts along the floor, blood and mashed-up gore, muscles and tissue, splattered all over the walls and even the ceiling.

"Jesus," Pace whispered. "What the fuck happened in there!?"

"I'm not going in there," Williams said.

"Hopefully we won't have to..." Blake murmured. Something suddenly shot blue-white sparks. Blake trained his light on whatever it was and saw a junction box fixed to the far wall. It had suffered some damage. Well, the lights were still on here, so, hopefully, it wasn't important. The only other window in the room was at the back. It offered a view into a more well-lit room. As Blake approached it, he stopped and did a double-take.

"Holy shit," he muttered.

"What?!" both Pace and Williams asked, worried.

"Jackpot," Blake replied.

In the room beyond, what looked like a break room and supply area, was a makeshift armory. There was a shotgun, a pair of silver pistols, boxes of shells and magazines and a supply case of fuel canisters.

"Whoa! Nice!" Pace said.

"Stock up, we might not get another chance," Blake said.

"Why? We're getting a ride out of here. This place has got to have a radio," Williams replied.

Blake ignored him and slipped one of the pistols into his belt, pocketed two magazines for it and grabbed another three fuel canisters. He was tempted to take the shotgun, but he already had the flamethrower and the MP-5. He offered it to Williams instead, who thanked him awkwardly and took it. They cleared out the makeshift armory.

"Pierce had to have come through here," Blake said, looking around the armory. There were two broken out windows and a trio of tables pushed up against the right side of the room. Besides the boxes of ammo, there was a mini-fridge, a coffeemaker, microwave and empty wrappers from candy bars and a few empty water bottles.

"I guess so. Where else would he go? But...where is he now?" Pace asked.

"He's either still here, or...I don't know, maybe he went back to Dronning Maud. I don't know what else might be around here," Blake replied.

"We should finish searching the base," Williams said.

Blake nodded in agreement, secretly hoping that they'd find another test kit. Just one more, and he could test Williams and either kill him or trust him. They did a quick search the makeshift armory and the main room, but found nothing of use in either of the rooms. Wanting to put off checking out the gore-stricken room, Blake opened the door to the right room. He'd come to the living quarters. A bed to his immediate left, tucked up into one corner, and another bed, a dresser and a table along the right wall. Some blood on the floor, more broken out windows and...

"Double jackpot," Blake whispered.

The table had a mess of radio equipment set up on it. It looked relatively intact.

"Pace," he said, pointing, after checking the room.

"On it," Pace replied.

"Watch the door," Blake said to Williams, who hesitated, the nodded and did so.

Blake moved over to one of the windows, staring out it. There was a large pole with a powerful light stuck atop it next to the base. It was flickering, casting a broken light across the snow and ice. There was nothing else out there, but visibility was very low. A moment later, Pace sighed heavily and stood up.

"No power," he said.

"Just to the radio?" Blake asked.

"Yeah. I'd place my money that the junction box in that nasty room provides power to this portion of the base," Pace replied.

Blake sighed. "God. Fine, come on."

They left the living quarters, crossed the main room and opened the final door. It led to a very small transitional room that was empty save for a table and some boxes. Reluctantly, Blake opened the other door, leading to the final room in the small base. A thought struck Blake: there was no toilet in the building. That couldn't be right. After a second, he decided it must be like an outhouse: there was an exterior building dedicated to just such a thing. What a miserable way to live. Blake wrinkled his nose as he surveyed the final room.

"God," he muttered. "Well, Pace..." he said.

"Yeah...yeah, I'll get right on it," Pace muttered, stepping carefully into the room as he pulled out a small toolkit he kept attached to his belt.

Blake watched him work as quickly as he could. He kept waiting for the engineer to drop one of the tools in his haste, but he managed to get through it with both speed and precision. After closing the little door on the junction box, Pace hurried out of the room. Blake closed the door behind him and the trio made their way back across the base.

"Man, this place is pretty miserable," Williams said. "I couldn't imagine living down here."

"We've seen worse," Blake replied.

"Yeah, for like a few weeks. These guys are down here for the long haul. At least six months. And you might be trapped if a storm like this blows in. Not to mention cabin fever, running low on supplies, a single fire that could kill everyone..."

"Yeah, it's pretty bad," Blake admitted. "I wouldn't do it."

"I would," Pace said, sitting down at the radio, which was making appropriate working noises now. "At least, for a good paycheck. It'd be like a vacation from the world. You get to sit around, drink, smoke some weed, and when you're done, you walk away with a big paycheck. Then you can go on a _real_ vacation for another six months."

"Maybe," Williams said after a moment.

Pace set to work on the radio. Blake moved to the door, towards the center of the building, hoping to get warmer. This place was too damned cold. A few moments passed while Pace tried to call out to the world, to Whitley, to _someone_.

"Whoa, whoa-shit! We've got a problem!" Williams cried out suddenly.

Blake felt his pulse spike. He turned around about the same time that Pace hopped up out of the chair. They joined Williams at the window. At first, Blake didn't see what had him so worried. Then he saw it. Shapes. Dark, little shapes were rushing towards them, popping out of the mist. Scuttlers. At least a dozen of them, and more on the way.

"Open fire!" Blake screamed.

Blake and Pace began picking out targets with their MP-5s, while Williams put his new shotgun to work. Bullets and slug shells cut through the cold air. The first wave of the invading Scuttlers went down, black gore spraying across the antarctic ice as the bullets shredded their horrible little bodies. Blake emptied his magazine, bringing down six of the little bastards. He hastily reloaded, spying more of them on the way.

Where the hell were they all coming from?

As he slapped a fresh magazine in and took aim, he sensed something behind him. Spinning around, he spied more Scuttlers crawling in through the open door.

"Fuck! They're behind us! I'll get the flank!" Blake shouted, shouldering the rifle and squeezing the trigger.

He hosed down the first two that came in, then the next one, then another three. He finished off another magazine after putting down the seventh one. But there were more. He let the rifle hang, whipped out the pistol and began firing again. He put down another four, then ran out of ammo for his sidearm. Behind him, the others were continuing their fight. Blake fished out his last magazine, slapped it in and opened fire again.

Luckily, he only had to put down two more of them. He turned around and saw that Pace and Williams had finished off the others.

"What the hell was that about!?" Pace asked, trembling as he reloaded.

"No idea, but I've got to find some more ammo. My MP-5 is out and I'm down to the last mag for my pistol," Blake replied.

"I've only got one magazine left in my gun," Pace replied.

"I don't have any. Just my shotgun," Williams replied.

Blake sighed. He carefully made his way back into makeshift armory, telling Pace to get back to work on the radio and Williams to secure the area. He spent five minutes searching the room, managing only to find another magazine for his pistol. He pocketed it, then rejoined the others. Pace looked unhappy, Williams more so.

"Nothing," he said. "I can't find anyone."

Blake sighed. "Now what?" he muttered. "We're kind of at a dead end here..." He spied something pinned to the wall over Pace's workstation. It was a map. He studied it, playing his flashlight over it. The others noticed the map and studied it, too.

"Shit," Williams whispered. "We're screwed."

Blake reluctantly admitted he was right. There wasn't anything even remotely within walking distance. The closest thing was a Russian outpost about twenty miles east of their position. Blake thought for a moment.

"Maybe...there might be a vehicle at the Norwegian outpost, a snowplow or something. We could get to that Russian outpost," Blake said.

"I didn't see any vehicle back there," Williams said. "We're so fucked-"

Blake began to chastise Williams, but abruptly the radio crackled to life. _"Blake..zzt...hear me? Over."_ It was Pierce.

Blake took a quick seat at the radio and activated it. "Pierce!? This is Blake, come back. Over."

" _Blake...ank god. There's a brand new outpost...quarter mile east of the medi-center. Dead east...compass...experimenting on them! You need...zzt...here now! I got...zzt..."_

The transmission faded. Blake spent a few minutes trying to get it back, but in the end, sat back, defeated. He could raise Pierce again. "So...did I get all that right? There's a new outpost a quarter mile dead east of here, we should use our compasses to get there and someone is... _experimenting_ on these things?" Blake asked slowly.

"That can't be right," Pace murmured. "I mean, how long have they known about this?"

"I saw a lot of stuff being built when they flew me in," Williams said.

"Weldon said something similar. My medic. They had him do some checkups on a bunch of military types. Not Special Forces. He said they might be Black Ops. And..." Blake hesitated. "I don't know, there's just been something weird about this whole mission, right from the beginning. It would make sense..."

"So we just waltz into this research base?" Williams asked.

"It's not like we've got much choice, I mean Dronning Maud and this place are dead ends, obviously. This place is new and within walking distance. I wasn't issued a compass, either of you?" Blake asked.

Williams shook his head, but Pace had one.

"Okay, good. Come on, let's get out of this place."


	7. Chapter 07: Fear

Pierce was right.

They ran into a perimeter chainlink fence about a quarter mile dead east of the medical center and Dronning Maud. Blake still would have liked some kind of vehicle. Even hurrying, kicking their way through the snow, he was practically dead numb by the time they hit that fence. He was shivering violently and knew he was really pushing his luck. He and the others needed to get inside sometime soon or they were going to be looking at some serious damage from frostbite or worse. They hurried along the length of the fence until they found a way in, a gate that was still open. Blake imagined that Pierce had come through here not so long ago.

Their goal had changed. He could easily envision Whitley, or someone above Whitley, calling Special Forces in to check out the outposts to cover his ass if the government or military were doing experiments on the infection. Hell, if anything, maybe he was hoping that the SF teams themselves would become infected. It'd be easy to make them disappear, and there'd be new test subjects to boot. That would explain a lot of things: why Whitley didn't want Blake going in after Pierce, the low intel, the poor resources.

Blake wasn't a paranoid man by nature. He knew that most cover-ups in the military existed not as actual, outright evil, but more to just cover some higher-ups ass or to hide a political nightmare due to a mistake. But that didn't mean he had full confidence in the men who signed his paychecks. He could see something like that happening. But this imprinted a new objective onto his mind with a terrifying clarity: if Whitley or anyone else was experimenting on these things, was planning on taking them out of Antarctica...

He had to stop them.

If this infection hit a populated area, it would spread like nothing before. It would make the Black Death look like a slight cough. He'd seen enough movies to know that the scientists wouldn't be able to keep their hands off of this infection, and to know that they wouldn't be able to contain it, no matter how smart they thought they were.

But first thing was first, investigating this outpost.

Of course, he could be wrong, he could just be being paranoid, but if the shoe fit...

As he led the others deeper into the outpost, beyond the fence, buildings began to appear through the mist. He saw one to his left and one dead ahead. The one to his left was closer and he could see a door, so he made his way there. He didn't say anything as he kicked his way through the snow, too cold for words now. Even when he arrived at the door and tried the handle, finding it locked, Blake remained silent.

He tried it a moment longer, then turned away from it and began making for the other structure up ahead. The building to the left, what appeared to be some kind of warehouse, was obviously locked up tight. No time to try and break it down now. He was freezing. They all were. He hurried on towards the next building, a two-story structure with an exterior stairwell. As he made his way towards it, Blake spied a third structure, in between the other two, deeper in the camp. It was topped with the bulbous shape of what appeared to be an observatory.

No time for that now.

There was a door that led into the first story of the base, but it, too was locked. Frustrated, Blake hustled up the stairs and tried that door. To his immense relief, it opened up. He shoved his way in, gun at ready, trembling, and spied a trio of Scuttlers across the room. These ones were different. Unlike the others who appeared to be a head on chicken legs, these more resembled spiders, bulbous heads on four thin, agile legs.

"Open fire!" he managed, taking aim and squeezing despite his trembling. He fired off six shots from the pistol, stepping aside, and managed to bring one of them down. Williams and Pace killed off the other two. Once he was sure nothing else was coming, Blake closed the door and simply leaned against the wall, trying to get his breath back.

"God, so damned cold down here," he muttered through clenched teeth.

"Tell me about," Williams replied.

They spent several minutes getting the feeling back in their extremities. Blake also tried to contact Pierce on his radio, but he received no reply. When the pins and needles became bearable, Blake held his flamethrower up.

"Okay, let's search this place," he said.

"I'm ready," Pace said.

Williams nodded. The room they were in was just a simple entry annex. There were a few large, unmarked metal crates along the far wall. Blake ignored them for the moment. There was only one way to go, a door in the middle of the right wall, so he went. It led through a small pair of rooms, also holding metal storage crates. The next room admitted them to a stairwell that led up. Frowning, wondering where it led and what the point of this building was, Blake hurried up it. The stairs folded back in on themselves and led to a closed door. Blake opened it up. The door led onto the roof. Sighing, Blake headed back out into the cold.

He and the others quickly investigated the snow-capped roof. Blake spied an opening across the way, over the roof of the other portion of this structure, the ground floor door that was locked. It was a vent shaft, a dark square cut into the ceiling. He considered his options for a moment, then finally sighed. He was going to have to investigate.

"You two, go back inside, wait for me at the entrance, got it?" he asked.

"What? You're going off by yourself? No way," Williams replied.

"Just do it, Williams. I need to find out what's in this building. I'll be back in five minutes, I promise," Blake replied.

Williams didn't look like he was willing to back down. "That's an _order,_ Williams," Blake added. Williams stared at him for a moment longer, then slowly nodded.

"Fine. Five minutes," he said.

"Five minutes," Blake replied.

He watched them go back inside, then made his way over to the hole. Playing his flashlight into it, he saw there was a little bit of space, like a crawlspace ceiling, enough for him to crouch into. He lowered himself into the hole and found the ceiling stable enough to stand on. A quick check of the crawlspace revealed it to be empty, but he was immediately hit by a pungent stench of fuel. This must be fuel storage.

Wonderful.

Blake spied another hole in the ceiling he was standing on and crawled over to it. The stench got worse, but as he got closer, he heard something heavy stomping around beneath him. Blake poked his head into the hole and looked around. The building below was unlit, but in the flashlight's glare, he could see several barrels of fuel, one of which had been knocked over and broken open. And...a Walker. Someone who wore the tattered remains of a red jumpsuit was stomping around, making horrible, inhuman growling sounds.

Blake considered his options for a moment. He had to kill this thing, but if he used fire, he'd just burn up...unless he ignited the fuel from up here. Blake thought about it for a little bit longer, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a flare. He'd have to act really fast. Holding his breath, Blake activated the flare and tossed it into the hole. He scrambled across the crawlspace, hauled himself up and out of the area.

He got onto the roof and ran across it, just managing to get to the doorway he'd come through a moment earlier when he felt as much as heard the massive explosion. The entire structure shuddered and a great pillar of black smoke began to billow out of the vent he'd just crawled out of, but otherwise everything seemed to be intact. Good. Now he could check out that room, provided the locked door had been damaged enough to admit access, and see if anything had survived. Hopefully that hadn't been Pierce locked up in there.

Blake opened the door and began making his way back down the stairs. But as he reached the bottom of them, he froze, scenting a horribly familiar smell: burning flesh. Fearing that something had somehow gone very wrong as a result of his actions, Blake raced back through the structure. His forward motion was checked as he came into the main entry annex. A twisted pile of charred meat and bones lay crumpled in a smoking heap in the center of the room. Blake could only stare at the remains of Pace and Williams.

For a moment, his mind twisted itself into sick knots, fearing that he had killed both of them. But, as rationality slowly returned, he pieced together what had happened: Williams had been infected. He'd attacked Pace, bursting out, and Pace had managed to get hold of the man's flamethrower. Williams must have lit up like a torch and rushed Pace, engulfing them both. Blake gagged and stumbled, stepping towards the exit.

He managed to get the door open and lurch out onto the landing, leaning over the side, before vomiting. It wasn't just what he had seen, he'd witness burned corpses before, or that these were two men under his command. It was that he was alone now. All of this, everything that had happened, was beginning to be too much. Aliens, Antarctica, conspiracies, cover-ups...having to face it by yourself was almost too much.

But...Pierce.

If he could just find Pierce, or another survivor from this installation, maybe. He still didn't have a test kit, but another human being would nice. Even an alien masquerading as a human. Blake spit a few times to clear his mouth, then remembered his bottled water and MREs. He began to reach for one, but suddenly had a paranoid thought: what if Whitley had spiked them somehow? He knelt, shrugged out of his pack and opened it up.

He reached inside, sorting through the stuff in there. The bottles of water looked clean enough, that was what was great about water, but the MREs...with a sigh, he threw them away. He couldn't trust them. Water, but no food. He downed one of the bottles and tossed it aside, then pulled the pack back on and straightened up. He needed to keep going. There was no way he could salvage anything off of Pace's or Williams' corpses, too risky, so that just left checking out the damned fuel storage and then moving on to the third building.

Blake hustled down the stairs, now totally alone with his thoughts. He wanted this to be over. This all felt too big for him. Sure enough, the door to fuel storage had been blown off its hinges. Blake stepped cautiously inside. The smoke was dying down now. He coughed as he looked around. The walls were all covered in blackened soot and ash, and he spied the charred remains of that Walker. He spent a few minutes poking around the building and finally found something: a reinforced case near the back of the building.

Opening it revealed a key with a little tag tied to it marked _observatory_. Blake hurried back outside, confused. Who the hell would put this here? He shrugged it off, no time to think about that now. Kicking his way through the snow, wary of more Walkers or Scuttlers, Blake made his way towards the observatory. It was also a two-storied structure, and more well-built than the fuel storage had been. He came to the only visible door and tried the key. It worked, the door unlocked and he stepped inside, quickly closing the door behind him.

It was silent in the entryway he stood in, though, distantly, he thought he could hear heavy, plodding footfalls. Not a good sign. Blake made slow progress through the first story of the observatory. It was a total wreck. There were four rooms, one of them a kitchen, the rest seemed to be dedicated to a mix of storage, huge banks of electronic gear and a place to eat and relax. One of the rooms held a stairwell that led up.

There were several bodies, broken by death, and blood everywhere. In the kitchen, Blake found only a torso with a huge smear of blood behind it. He realized the man must have been ripped in half and then tossed aside. Still alive, if only for a minute, he'd crawled slowly across the floor. The sight turned Blake's stomach, but he had nothing left to give. He found himself wondering what had happened here. It was obvious that the infection had struck, and the strike had been violent and brutal. How many men had been stationed here? How many knew what was going on? Blake still hadn't found any direct evidence of experimentation. For all he knew, this could be some kind of weather observation outpost, freshly put up.

But, so it shouldn't be a total waste, he _did_ discover a pair of test kits stashed in a locker near the entryway. Relief flooded through him. At least _that_ was taken care of. Although it was a short-term solution of trust, he knew. He'd only be able to prove his own humanity and that of one other person. Well, Pierce was the man he was looking for. He owed him that much. Blake moved back to the stairs and hurried up them.

As soon as he came to the next floor, he immediately realized he was in enemy territory. Those plodding sounds he'd heard earlier abruptly started up again. A huge, lumbering Walker with sickly white skin and a massive red pincer at the end of one arm stepped out of a doorway to the left and began making for him.

Cursing, Blake did the thing that made the most sense: he retreated. The stairs were a natural bottleneck. He hustled down them, turned around and brought his flamethrower into play. Sure enough, the Walker came right for him. He squeezed the trigger, emptying the remaining fuel in his current canister onto the hideous thing. It began shrieking loudly, loud enough to make him cry out and back up a few paces.

Then it ran right at him.

Blake narrowly dodged it, feeling the horrid heat emanating off of its body. He spun, ready for more, and spied the beast crashing to a halt. It began to turn around, ready to take another run at him, then abruptly collapsed. Blake watched it burn silently for a moment, then made his way cautiously back upstairs.

He did a quick sweep of the area, finding two more rooms and a stairwell awaiting his inspection. The main room was a confusion of desks, tables and chairs. Various maps and papers were spread out over the desks, along with a mix of all manner of office supplies. Blake spent a moment looking through it, discovering several blueprints. He saw what appeared to be a submarine on one page, a collection of large, rounded chambers on another, as well as, unmistakably, the test kit. The models he'd found here looked more streamlined, more efficient, than the ones at Dronning Maud. Setting the papers aside, Blake made for the sole computer terminal in the room. He let his flamethrower hang by its sling and activated the computer.

A report was on the screen. He quickly scanned it.

 _Those guys in camo gear were here again today. They appear to be working on something under the ground. I have seen a lot of their equipment arriving but I'm not sure where it's being kept. They don't work for Gen Inc, I know that much._

Gen Inc? He'd never heard of it before, but that was a corporate name. He could buy into the idea that the military or the US Government was experimenting on these things...but a _corporation_? Who the hell would cut a corporation in on the deal? This was too much. Blake sighed and finished searching the area. The only other room was a bathroom that was so covered in blood and gore that Blake didn't feel like poking through it.

There was only one place left to go: up the stairwell. Maybe, in the observatory, he'd discover a way over to the warehouse or a key or something. Maybe it was where Pierce had gone. Blake hustled up the stairwell and stepped onto the roof of the building. He followed a path across the roof to a slanted walkway that led up to the observatory. The door was slightly ajar. He pushed it open with the muzzle of his flamethrower. Immediately, he noticed a man sitting on the floor to the right of the door, holding a pistol.

Pierce.

"Pierce!" Blake cried, stepping and closing the door behind him. "What happened? Where'd you go?" he asked.

"Sorry," Pierce replied, he suddenly started coughing. "Got lost in the storm, found my way here. Blake...one of them got me. I'm infected."

A cold silence filled the observatory. "What?" Blake managed.

"I'm infected, Blake," Pierce repeated. "I can _feel_ it. But listen. This place, I don't know who Genetic Incorporated is, but they've got to be working with Whitley. I saw some of the files. They were signed by him, by Whitley, and some of them had the US Government's damned _stamp_ on it. There's some kind of deal, a conspiracy...you've got to stop it, Blake. Obviously they can't control it, look at this place!"

"Preaching to the choir here," Blake replied.

"Good...good. One other thing...I forgive you," Pierce said quietly.

"Pierce..."

"No, Blake. It wasn't your fault."

Blake stood, frozen with indecision. He was flashing back to several years ago. Not long after Pierce and Blake had become friends, Pierce's younger brother Nate had gotten into the Special Forces. By chance, he ended up on Blake's squad. Their mission was simple: rescue a US ambassador who had been taken hostage by an extremist group in Iran. The mission was straightforward enough, but it had gone bad. They'd gotten the hostage, but ended up getting discovered. They'd had to shoot their way out, and Nate had taken two to the head. He didn't have a chance. Pierce found out and blamed Blake, threatening to kill him if he ever saw him again.

"Nate was always a hardheaded kid, stubborn and full of himself. Getting into Special Forces...it was his dream job, but I should've said something, done something...he got himself killed because he was too stupid to duck. I read the after action reports and I know my brother. It wasn't your fault, Blake. I'm sorry I threatened to kill you," Pierce said. There was little emotion in his voice, it was more like he was delivering a report of his own.

"Pierce..." Blake said again, uncertain of what to say.

"Yeah, I know. Big emotional reconciliation. I just wanted to let you know, because obviously there's only one solution to my problem. You've got to kill me, then burn me. Preferably in that order, because I don't want to die by fire."

Blake shook his head. "Pierce...that's nuts. I mean, there has to be another way. There might be some kind of cure or..."

But Pierce was shaking his head. "What's a matter, Blake? Can't handle it. We both know this is the only way out of this. Once it's in there, it's in there."

Blake hesitated. If it was anyone else, he wouldn't be this conflicted. Well, probably. But this was Pierce. Neil Pierce, a man who had practically been his brother for awhile, a man who's brother he had let get killed. Could he do it?

Pierce sighed. "Well, like my dad always said...if you want a job done right, you've gotta do it yourself." Before Blake could say or do anything further, Pierce raised the pistol to his temple and squeezed the trigger.

"Pierce!" Blake screamed as the shot tore through the man's skull, creating a small crater in the side of his head. Blood and brains sprayed all over the wall behind him. All was silent in the observatory, save for the shrieking of the winds.

Blake didn't know how long he stood there, staring miserably at his friend's corpse, before something, duty or survival instinct or the cold, made him start moving again. He looked around the small room that he was in. Most of it was taken up by a huge contraption sticking out of the ceiling. The telescope, he presumed. It was hooked into a pair of computers on a desk. Next to the computers, Blake spied something.

A stack of magazines for an MP-5, and a test kit. Pierce's last official action as a soldier. Sighing gently, Blake tucked the test kit into his pack, reloaded his MP-5 and put the three spares in his pocket. "Thanks," he murmured.

One of the computer screens had text on it. Numbly, he read.

 _I've positioned the telescope on a large object in the ground. There is some activity and I saw people transporting equipment and containers to the site..._

Next, Blake looked at the other screen, which showed what the telescope was seeing. He frowned, looking at a huge, dark disc-shaped thing amidst a field of ice. It obviously had been dug up and there were indeed several huge shipping containers next to it. He wondered how the telescope could see through all this crap, then realized this must be a picture. Sighing, he checked out the rest of the observatory, but found nothing.

Before he left, he made sure to light up Pierce's corpse, preferring to think of it as a funeral pyre rather than containment precautions. A little like shooting a dead friend in the head to keep him from becoming a zombie. Making his way back out into the cold, Blake felt at a loss. All he had left to go on was the warehouse. He knew he couldn't just sit down and die or wait for something to happen, it just wasn't in him. Even after all that had happened, even if he was totally alone now, maybe working on borrowed time, he couldn't just quit.

So, when he found a narrow walkway between the observatory and the warehouse roof, he walked carefully across it, found a vent in the roof and pried it open. He played his flashlight into the dark opening, saw nothing of danger and ducked inside. He half-expected the vent to collapse from his weight, but it seemed sturdy enough. Blake spent a few moments crawling through it, then stopped at the first grate he came to.

It offered a dim view of the warehouse interior. He was up high, just over a catwalk that ringed the interior and seemed to serve as an impromptu second story. Figuring that this was as good as it was going to get, Blake kicked the grate off and dropped onto the catwalk. To his immediate right was a door, but further up, beyond that, he spied something short and bulky moving around in front of another door. This door had a window in it, and a terrified face looked out from behind it. A survivor! Blake hurried forward.

That was when he really saw the bulky thing. It was a Walker...but not like any Walker he'd seen so far. It was squat and three-legged, built like a bulldog on steroids. It turned towards him and let out a low, menacing growl.

Blake didn't have time for this. He was cold and angry and sad. He began backing up, opening fire, spraying the thing down with half a magazine of ammo from his MP-5. He quickly switched to his flamethrower and lit the ugly monster up. Blake made sure to keep his distance until it had died, then made his way over to the door.

"Open up," Blake said.

"Who-who are you?" the man asked. He was pale and had short brown hair. He wore a blue jumpsuit with a heavy hood.

"I'm Captain Blake, Special Forces. Open the fucking door," Blake replied.

"No way, I don't know if you're human," the man replied.

Blake sighed, reached into his pack and retrieved a test kit. "You know what this is?" he asked.

The man nodded his head. "Yeah! God, I thought they were all gone," he replied.

"I've got more. I'll test myself, then you test yourself, got it?"

"Got it."

Blake tested himself. When it was negative, he threw away the kit and the man unlocked the door. Blake covered him with his flamethrower, then passed a second kit to him. The man stuck himself, pulled the trigger and held the kit up. After a long moment, Blake lowered his flamethrower, breathing out a long sigh of relief.

"Thank god," he muttered, stepping into the room and closing the door behind him.

The room was small, just an office, crammed with a pair of desks and filing cabinets. Blake studied this man. "Who are you?" he asked.

"Marcus Collins," the man replied. "I'm an engineer here. You said you're...Special Forces? Like the United States Army?"

"Yes. John Blake. Who do you work for? What is this place?"

Collins grinned awkwardly. "Well...officially? A weather observation outpost. Genetic Incorporated runs this place. But it's obvious that that's a load of crap. We've been down here for about a month and-"

"A month!?" Blake cried.

"Yeah, why?"

"I...just keep going, I'll fill you in when you're done," Blake replied.

Collins nodded. "Okay. So, me and a bunch of other guys were flown down from Virginia. We all signed on for a huge, _huge_ bonus to run this weather research station in Antarctica. I needed the money. I started to get suspicious when I was told that we weren't to go into the warehouse, it was off-limits. Then, even weirder, they weren't allowing us to sleep or really live here. We were flown or driven out from a 'support station'. And then there were all these delays, sometimes we'd go whole days without coming out here. And even when we were here, there'd be guys in gasmasks and white camouflage coming and going from the warehouse.

"Me and some of the other guys managed to piece together that this was some kind of cover up. Gen Inc had set up a fake weather station to cover up another operation. It wasn't unheard of. What we couldn't figure out was _what_ they were doing. I mean, it's Antarctica! Then one of the braver engineers broke into the warehouse and stole a box that looked important. Turned out it was a box of those test kits, with instructions. Obviously, they freaked. We all freaked. They were making some kind of virus down here? We went to our boss, who told us he'd check it out. Unfortunately, we did that _here_ , instead of back at the support station.

"I supposed it wouldn't have mattered, either way, but we were rounded up by those guys in the camouflage gear. They had guns. Freaking machine guns. One guy in charge started giving us this speech about not asking questions and ignorance is bliss when all of a sudden one of the camo guys starting have a seizure...then another, and a third, and two more. Then they just... _changed!_ They became these hideous monsters...they tore into us, into their own men. That commander got his head torn off...

"It was absolute chaos. I don't remember some of it, all I know is that I ran through the base, there was a fire, lots of shooting and screaming and dying. Me and a few other guys holed up in the bathroom with one of those camo dudes who actually seemed to know what was happening. He admitted he'd figured it out, seen a few reports he wasn't supposed to, explained all about the infection, how someone could be one of these things and you'd never know it, unless you had the test. He had a few on him, and he started testing us...

"This woman I knew, Casey, she...was infected. The bathroom turned into a freaking slaughterhouse. I guess I was the only one who got out. I ran, ended up here, locked the doors behind me and then that damned... _thing_ chased me up here. I've been here for a while," Collins explained.

Blake nodded, listening intently. It made a lot of sense. He spent the next five minutes bringing Collins up to speed on the situation, then gave him the bad news.

"We're going to search this warehouse top to bottom. I want to find where they were preforming the experiments," he said firmly.

"Ugh...do we have to?" he asked.

"Yes. I didn't see any helicopters or vehicles out there. You've seen what happens, Collins, we _can't_ let this thing get out. Imagine this thing in New York or LA..."

Collins sighed. "Yeah, I know, I know...god, fine. I'll help."

"Thanks...and here." Blake passed Collins his pistol. "There's about half a magazine in there. I'm sorry I can't give you more but...well, I'm just not ready to trust you with a machine gun or a flamethrower," he said.

Collins nodded. "I understand. I wouldn't trust me with it, either. I'll just try to be an extra pair of eyes for you."

"Excellent. Now, don't aim that at anything you don't intend to shoot. Be careful and aware of your surroundings at all times. If you see anything, _anything,_ let me know."

"Got it."

Blake did a quick search of the room, found nothing and led Collins back out into the dim warehouse. "Damn, it's dark in here," Blake muttered.

As if in response, he heard an electric noise coming from behind him, like a short circuit. In a small alcove in between the only two rooms on the second story, he spied a blue-white flare. He and Collins checked it out, and found a malfunctioning junction box.

"I got it," Collins said, tucking the pistol into his belt.

He disappeared into the alcove. A moment later, the lights overhead flared to life, casting the warehouse into an immediate and powerful light.

"Good job," Blake said, genuinely pleased. "Now let's check this other room out."

He moved over to the other door and looked inside through a window in the door. There was another office, this one a bit more well-furnished and with what looked like an important card on the desk. To Blake, it resembled a credit card, though one side had glistening lines and squares on it. It seemed important. He tried the door, but it was locked.

"Hell with that," he muttered, then shot out the window.

The sound of gunfire and shattering glass brought no one, so Blake reached in and undid the lock. He pushed the door open and stepped inside. A quick sweep of the room showed nothing dangerous, but he spied a computer next to the card he'd seen. Blake grabbed the card and pocketed it, then looked at the report typed up on the computer.

 _Construction of the test chambers has been relatively smooth. We lost another three workers in an accident last week, but the boss doesn't seem to think that is a reasonable excuse for being a few days behind schedule. I can't get any more hands on this project. The workers have been glorifying their experiences here when they return to base and as a result people are too scared to come here._

Well, that certainly helped fill in a few blanks and confirm Collins' story. He suddenly remembered Weldon talking about checking out those military types. The guys in white camo? It'd make sense. Maybe they were a Black Ops team or ex-military gone into the private sector. Why would Whitley do this? Or was he just a pawn? Too many questions. They needed more answers. Blake led Collins down into the main warehouse.

As he walked down the ramps to the main floor, he studied it. There was a large, open area with a crane hovering overhead. The exterior of the room was ringed with huge cargo containers, all of them stamped with Gen Inc on the side. As Blake came down the ramp, he suddenly heard a thud, then another, and several more.

"Blake! More of them!" Collins cried suddenly.

"Get back upstairs!" Blake shouted as he spied another two of the Bulldog Walkers charging towards him from across the warehouse. Blake knew he didn't have long. He raised his MP-5 and focused on the nearest one, hitting it with a concentrated stream of gunfire. He emptied the rest of the magazine into it, then switched to his flamethrower, raced up to it and lit it and the other one on fire, spraying them down.

The pair of Bulldog Walkers began roaring and Blake turned and ran from them. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that his plan had been partially successful. The one he'd whittled down with gunfire was now lying on the floor in a burning heap, the other one, however, was currently bounding across the warehouse towards him, still aflame.

"Look out, Blake!" Collins called.

Blake threw himself out of the way. The beast raced past him, trailing flames. Blake picked himself up off the floor, hit it with another dose of fire, and ran away once more. This time, the creature collapsed before it made it to him a second time. Blake let out a long sigh and did another sweep of the area. He called Collins down once he was sure they were alone again.

"Jesus, those things..." Collins muttered. "I mean, I've read a lot of books, seen a lot of horror movies, but... _god_."

"Yeah, I know. Come on."

They spent another fifteen minutes searching the warehouse, finding and killing a few lingering Scuttlers. All of the crates were either full and sealed up tight or open and empty. Blake grew increasingly frustrated as their sojourn ultimately ended at a single door. It had a magnetic card reader next to it.

"I guess this is it," he said as he fished out the card and swiped it through the reader.

"Yeah," Collins muttered.

The door opened. Blake pushed through it and came to a small metal room. The only two things that popped out to him were a stairwell and a shelf filled with tools. He spent a moment searching through it and, finding nothing else, made his way down the stairwell. It led the pair of men down into a large tunnel carved out of ice. A sense of subtle dread and disquiet settled over Blake as he slowly began to make his way down the ice tunnel.

"I don't like this," Collins murmured.

"Yeah, me neither," Blake replied quietly.

The tunnel ended in a large, steel door. No window. Blake placed his hand on the door handle, hesitated, then opened it up and stepped inside. A stack of boxes directly ahead of him suddenly exploded apart and he cried out, stumbling back into Collins. Something _huge_ was coming towards him. Blake screamed and threw himself to the left, knocking aside more small wooden crates. "Collins, get _down!_ " Blake yelled.

But Collins didn't have Blake's training. He'd survived this far, but no farther. The monster, a twelve-foot horror, came down on him like a hammer. A tentacle whipped out, wrapped around Collins' neck and tore his head from his body. Blake opened fire with his MP-5, getting as far back as he could from the huge beast. He prepared himself for the horrible end, the agonizing death that was to ensue...but it never came.

Blake got to his feet, backed into the corner, and realized what was happening. The huge thing before him was stuck fast to the floor, as though it had grown straight out of the metal plating. It was a hideous monstrosity, a concentration of exposed musculature and tissue. A collection of gnarled strands of bloody tissue supported the base of the creature. The rest of it was a huge, roughly torso-shaped slab of exposed muscle. Out of the left side grew a huge arm that ended in a bloody dog head, out of the right was an arm that ended in some kind of strange lizard-shaped head. A powerful tentacle grew directly out of the middle.

The beast roared and raged, but it couldn't move and its reach wasn't long enough to get hold of Blake like it had Collins. Blake considered his options for a moment, trembling with adrenaline. All he had to do was kill it. Easier said than done. So far, he'd experienced excellent results by shooting these things and then lighting them on fire. He supposed that would work. Blake made sure he was in a perfectly safe position, then opened fire.

He emptied the current magazine and another one into the monstrosity, loaded the final magazine, then brought his flamethrower to bear. He frowned. How to do this? The monster's roaring and shrieking was making it difficult to think. He took a step back and bumped into one of the boxes. It tipped over and something hit the floor between his feet. Blake glanced down. It was a grenade, painted orange, with a symbol of flames on the side.

"Holy shit," he whispered.

This was perfect. Blake grabbed it and two more from the box he'd knocked over. Working quickly, he retreated behind a small stack of crates to his side, pulled the pin on two of the grenades and tossed them both in rapid succession. He ducked down and felt the immense heat of a pair of incendiary grenades going off. He waited a few minutes, then poked his head up. The beast had collapsed to the floor, a smoldering heap of burning flesh. The room was slowly filling with smoke. He spied a door at the back of it and hurried over to it. Opening it, Blake stepped through and found himself in another room.

This one ended in another large room with a pair of elevators that were firmly locked and dark. They weren't going anywhere. There was a hatch, however, so Blake made for that. He undid the wheel at the top and opened it up. A metal hallway that appeared to be empty of anything lethal waited for him. He hesitated, waiting, and saw nothing.

Blake jumped down.


	8. Chapter 08: Questionable Ethics

Blake dropped into a corridor and was immediately greeted by three corpses. Two of them were huddled up in one corner, twined together, half-burned, nastily mutated. Someone had obviously been in the middle of bursting out. Behind him, a third corpse, or part of one. It was little more than a torso and an arm in a pool of blood. Ahead and behind him, Blake spied open hatchways. The one behind him led to a short corridor that immediately turned right, the other one led into a room that seemed to be filled with a thin haze of steam.

Next to him was a thick window. He frowned, staring at the dark blue water beyond it, and felt strangely dislocated from himself. Here he was, in Antarctica, below the ice, cutting his way into a government conspiracy, fighting an alien virus that assumed the form of those it killed. How could he possibly hope to stop either of these threats...let alone try to stay alive? With a growing difficulty, Blake did what he always did when the situation seemed hopeless: he told himself to stop trying to look at the big picture, focus on the here and now.

It was a low, menacing growl that grabbed his attention. It was coming from behind him, opposite the steam-filled room. Turning, he switched to his flamethrower and cautiously made his way to the door and into the short corridor. It turned into a small room with three more doors, one on each side and one dead ahead. They were all numbered, all shut and all firmly locked. Also, they had windows in them. Blake tracked the source of the growling to the door on the right. The noise almost sounded like respiration.

It had a **3** over it, nothing else. Through the glass, Blake could see a small cell with a body, a table and a Walker standing in it. The thing began to pace back and forth. It had no head, was wrapped in a sickly white skin and had mismatched arms. One seemed to have not only grown in length and size, but had split into two arms at the base. The other was withered and twisted, looking useless. It was nearly the same deal for the legs: one was a lot larger and thicker, the other was withered, only on the legs it was reversed.

Blake left the thing alone and moved over to the opposite door, this one marked with a **2** overhead. A fire was raging inside. Great. He moved down the corridor to its end. This door had a **1** over it, but also a sign: **PREP LAB**. He caught a hint of thick medical shelves and something in a depression in the floor, glass and metal, but the lighting wasn't all that good. Sighing, Blake retreated back to the original corridor he'd dropped into and stood at the entryway to the steamy room. Overhead, he saw a sign marking it as the heat exchange.

Of course.

He began making his way into the room. It wasn't very big, and seemed claustrophobic. All manner of piping ran along the walls and the ceiling, not to mention a pair of open ventilation shafts. There were two more doors along the left side of the room, but they seemed to have been wedged shut in some kind of explosion or structural damage, and, on top of that, Blake didn't see anything useful through the windows in either of them. He was just about to make his way towards the final door, across the room, when he heard something.

It was a dull thud, followed by a familiar growl.

Scuttlers.

Turning, he raised his MP-5. He had to be careful, the only magazine he had left was currently in the gun. After that, well...he spied the Scuttler in one of the two open vents. It was growling at him, one of the chicken-legged uglies, and probably preparing to leap at him. He put it down with a couple of well-placed shots, splattering its black blood all over the interior of the vent. Even before it flopped forward out of the vent and splattered to the floor, another one dropped down, then _another_ one in another vent across the room.

Blake cursed and fired again, putting down the second one he already had in his sights. The third one had dropped down onto the floor and was coming to him. He shifted aim, fired, missed, fired again and sprayed its blood all over the floor. Blake waited, remaining tense and still, but no more came. He sighed softly. By his count, he had about half a magazine left in his MP-5. After that it was just his flamethrower. Not good.

He made his way slowly and cautiously through the foggy room and passed through the door he'd initially been heading for. It wasn't anything like a normal door, or even a door on a submarine. He'd been on subs before, and they had hatches you had to spin to open and close the doors. This one seemed to be on a track built into the walls, floor and ceiling. At the push of a button, it slammed open. For some reason, he didn't like it.

When he passed through this door, he came to a very small antechamber that had two more doors, one on either side. They both had thick windows built into the center of them. The one to the right offered almost no view, just the beginning of a corridor that immediately turned left. The other door showed him a table and computers. He went through that door, took a quick look around. He'd come to some kind of command room.

There was a metal island of computer terminals in the center of the room. Along its peripheral were more desks and monitors and keyboards. He checked out the central computers first. It didn't take him long to become dissatisfied. Three of them were broken, and the other three were just CCTV monitors, showing him different portions of the underwater base. One just showed the corridor with the numbered doors, another was a view from inside one of those numbered chambers, the one with the horrible, large-armed monstrosity.

The final view was most depressing of all. It was in some metal room stuffed with all manner of mechanical equipment, what might be a pressure or heat management room. A man in a white jumpsuit was being mauled a Walker.

Blood sprayed the camera lens.

Blake turned away from it, frustrated and furious because he knew there was nothing he could do. Even if he knew where the man was, even if he could get there in under thirty seconds...the man would either die of his wounds or turn into one of _them_. Blake closed his eyes for a moment, listening to the uncomfortable creak and groan of the metal around him. He'd always hated being underwater. What was worse was the fact that the ceiling was leaking in places. Who the hell builds an underwater research lab in _Antarctica_?

Turning his attention to the final working computer screen in the room, Blake found a report and began reading through it.

 _Research Update:_

 _We have taken a number of research specimens and are running tests on them. The most interesting of which is taking place in the Growth Chambers (access code 7291) where the dead specimens have responded to the treatments and are showing results of up to 400% cell growth. The next stage is to attempt reanimation of the cells._

 _Dr. Shaun Faraday,_

 _Research Director, Gen Inc._

"Oh god..." Blake whispered, taking a step back from screen. They were actually trying to make the things _stronger_!? What were they thinking!?

He had to stop this.

Blake turned his attention to the final portion of the room. A quartet of large, numbered switches occupied the far wall, beneath one of the windows. He stared at them dumbly for a moment, wondering what they could mean, then he had it. The numbers from the other corridor. He took a quick look at the camera again, and then an idea popped into his head. One chamber had a fire going in it, another had a Walker trapped in it.

He thought about opening one and killing the other, but then gave another thought to maybe just leaving them both contained. Unless...Blake checked the monitor that showed the inside of its cage. He heaved a sigh. Of course. There was a box of what appeared to be ammunition and another _pair_ of test kits caged in with it! Great. Well, screw the fire, he'd just have to take care of it himself. But the first thing he should do was make sure he could get that Prep Lab door open. Blake crossed back over to the switches, found the appropriate one and tried to throw it. But it wouldn't budge. He tried again, as hard as he could, but there was nothing.

He was about to hit the damned thing when he noticed a sticky note lying on the floor. Picking it up, he read it over. It basically said that the Prep Lab door lock had been malfunctioning and the only way to override it was from inside of the Growth Chamber, in the auxiliary power room. Blake groaned. Not the Growth Chamber...

He had a good idea of where that might be. He left the command room, crossed the little antechamber and opened the final door in the area. He hurried down the corridor and found a door marked **GROWTH CHAMBER** , with a keypad. Recalling the code he'd read in Dr. Faraday's report, he punched it in and stepped through the door. Immediately, he didn't like what he saw. The Growth Chamber seemed to be a maze of metal corridors and small rooms. This was definitely going from bad to worse.

Mustering his courage, Blake set off into the maze.

The corridors were too narrow, the lights too dim, the ceiling too high. Everything he did echoed horribly, and soon he became aware of the fact that he wasn't alone. He kept encountering smashed glass cases on small white pedestals. It was obvious they were meant to hold Scuttlers. Blake made his way through the twisting maze, coming to dead ends, occasionally finding dead soldiers or researchers with Gen Inc stenciled on their uniforms.

None of them had any weapons.

It wasn't long before he started running into Scuttlers. He took them down as they came to him, two or three shots at a time, but by the time he finally came to the end of the maze, the auxiliary room, he'd run dry on ammo. Not that it mattered _too_ much. The auxiliary room turned out to be where that camera had been pointing, which meant that Blake located the Walker that had killed that unnamed man in the white jumpsuit.

It was still feasting on him, or...doing _something_ to him. Blake torched the beast, backing out of the room and letting it burn and die. When the shrieking stopped, he reentered the room and located the override switch for the Prep Lab. Throwing it, he retraced his steps, making his way out of the Growth Chamber as quickly as possible.

He needed to find someone still alive, or maybe some research or...something to help him put an end to this madness. He couldn't just walk away empty-handed. Hell, he couldn't really walk away at all. Where would he go? The question was still bugging him as he stepped into the command center and opened up the final door he intended to. Blake quickly retraced his steps through the steamy room and prepped his flamethrower.

Almost as soon as he stepped into the corridor, the massive Walker leaped out of the chamber it'd been locked up in and ran for him. Blake immediately squeezed the trigger, blasting the thing with lit flamethrower fuel, screaming in both fury and fear. He backed up, keeping his finger on the trigger, and emptied the fuel canister he was using. Hastily, he reloaded as he continued backing up. The thing was still coming for him.

He'd just made it back into the steam room when it collapsed to the floor, letting out a weak roar of pain. Blake made his way past the smoking terror and entered its cage. How or why it ended up locked in here was beyond him, and Blake was beyond caring at the moment. He checked out the pair of test kits and the box of ammo. The kits looked great, so he put them into his backpack, and, even better, the box of ammo was for an MP-5. There were five magazines. Blake let out a relieved sigh as he reloaded, then pocketed the rest.

Maybe things were looking up.

It was time to see what was in the Prep Lab.

Blake approached the door cautiously. There was something ominous about it, something that made his combat instincts stir. What could he do? He had no choice. He had to go on. Blake stepped forward and opened the door. He moved, gun first, into the Prep Lab. Immediately, he saw that it was all built around a huge depression in the floor. It was cordoned off with metal bars. In the depression was some kind of tank of steel and glass. Within the storage tank was another Walker, a hideous mutation that was distorted behind the glass.

Ringing the peripheral of the room were all manner of examination tables, medical cabinets, tables, sinks, counter tops, all of it cast in shiny stainless steel. It was marred occasionally by a smear of blood, some of it red, some of it black. A headless corpse sat against one wall, looking lonely. There was just one door in the room. Blake took a moment to search it, continually tossing nervous glances at the huge Walker held in the tank.

There was nothing worthwhile in the room, so Blake went through the door and up a narrow corridor. He stared in through the glass mounted in the door at the end of the corridor. A large, open medical lab waited for him. Blake opened the door and took a quick survey of the room. His half of the area was open, like a surgical bay. Also like a surgical bay, there was an enormous examination table, tilted slightly upwards, to his left. There were three massive, powerful restraining straps attached to the bloodied table.

They were all broken.

Blake swallowed nervously. Something _big_ was in the area.

Even as he thought this, he heard heavy, plodding footfalls from somewhere. He scanned the area. Dead ahead were two broad support pillars. He could see an alcove of space behind them and had a view of some barrels-

A massive Walker, easily eight feet tall with ashy gray skin, stepped out in front of the barrels. Blake aimed his MP-5 and opened fire. Almost as soon as he did, his hearing and vision were overloaded by a massive explosion. Blake fell flat on his ass and was shoved back several feet as a wave of heat washed over him. A few seconds later Blake lurched to his feet, groaning. There were flaming bits of gore spread out all over the lab. As he was processing this, a new figure emerged from behind one of the pillars, holding a pistol.

"Don't move!"

Blake raised his own weapon. "Identify yourself!" he snarled.

The man before him was short and squat with a crew cut of black hair. He wore a blue jumpsuit with a white biohazard symbol over the left side of his chest. He wore a white shirt beneath the jumpsuit, visible at the neckline, and white sneakers. The distrust and paranoia were naked in his gaze and he looked ready to blow Blake's brains out.

"My name is Price," he said after a long moment. "Who the hell are you?"

"Blake. I'm Special Forces. I assume you're with Gen Inc," Blake replied.

Price kept aiming his pistol. Blake had to give him credit, the barrel wasn't wavering an inch. Finally, he lowered it, slightly. "Yeah, I'm an engineer here. What the hell is the Special Forces doing down here?"

"It's a long story...but I imagine you won't believe anything I say until I run a blood test."

Price nodded. "Obviously you've picked a few things up."

"Yes. Now, I've got some test kits in my pack. I'm going to get them out," Blake said, slowly lowering his MP-5.

"Slowly," Price replied.

Blake got out his test kit and tested himself. It came out negative. Price relaxed visibly. "My turn," he muttered.

Blake passed a second kit to Price, who stuck it in his arm and pulled the trigger. Blake kept him covered with his flamethrower, waiting as the long seconds ticked out. Nothing happened. Both of them let out a sigh.

"Wait, why are _you_ relieved?" Blake asked.

"We haven't been able to determine if an infected subject _knows_ if they're infected," Price replied.

Blake frowned. "That's...really damned creepy," he muttered.

"Yeah, tell me about it. I always knew something like this was going to happen."

"What _did_ happen? What were you guys doing down here? How long were you down here for?"

"I've been living on site here for close to a week. Before this I lived in another research base for close to a month," Price replied.

"A month!? Jesus, I thought they'd just been getting started...go on."

"Well, it's obvious they found some kind of lifeform buried in the ice, something that has the capacity to take over a host and replace it with a copy. And it's obviously very violent and capable of great destruction. There was some kind of power failure earlier today, in the morning. At the same time, some of the guys burst out, everything went totally nuts. I tried to fight them off...I used to be in Marine Force Recon, combat engineer, I left when I figured out I could make more money in the private sector...

"Anyway, obviously, that failed. The other guys died, I ran, locked myself in a back storeroom. I've been working up the courage to try and break out of this place," Price explained.

"It isn't any better topside," Blake replied. He spent a few minutes both searching the immediate area and bringing Price up to speed. There were two more rooms in the area, both of them storage rooms, one of which Price had been hiding in. There was nothing worthwhile in either of the room, which Blake didn't like. He had supplies, bullets mostly, but it wouldn't keep him alive forever. He and Price finished up their search.

"Now what?" Price asked.

"Now, we finish searching this facility. How much more is there?"

"Not much. Just a bunch of testing chambers below and an observation deck."

"Great. After that, provided we live, we get back topside and...shit, I don't know, figure something out," Blake replied, not liking their prospects. "Can I assume that you agree with me? About the whole 'we need to stop this' thing?"

"Yeah, definitely. I was doing this for a paycheck but...this is nuts, too dangerous. This can't get off the south pole."

"Agreed. Come on."

They stepped into the next room, which was a big, steel stairwell. Blake led Price down the stairs until he came to the observation platform. It was mercifully clear of Walkers or Scuttlers, though a ripped-up, burned, mutilated corpse occupied a far corner. The observation deck was exactly what it sounded like. Dead ahead was another collection of numbered switches, though these went up to nine. To the right were a trio of desks with more CCTV setups on it. To the left were more desks, one which held a computer and several binders.

"Wonderful," Blake muttered, walking over to the switches. They were set up beneath a broad window that looked out over what must be the testing chambers. He could see nine of them. He studied the switches.

"We should open them all up, make it easier," Price said.

"No," Blake replied. "There might be people down there. Survivors. Not to mention, we have no idea what's in there and I don't want to fight half a dozen of those things at once."

"Good points," Price murmured. "I...sorry, I don't want you to think I'm in an idiot. It's been a long day, no food, no sleep-"

"It's fine. Clearly you're smart and strong enough to stay alive. I trust you to watch my back. Now, let's see what we can see," Blake replied.

He walked over to the bank of monitors and began studying them. After consulting with Price, he had a few things figured out.

"I count three Walkers, each in different chambers, and...two survivors. One, of course, at the very end, the other, thankfully, at the very beginning, in Chamber One. Can you identify either of them?" he asked.

"Yeah, both," Price replied, studying the monitors. "The guy at the end of Doctor Shaun Faraday, he's the guy in charge around here, the head brain. The other guy is...god, Pakenhan or Parnov or something, a soldier. I saw him earlier today but lost track of him."

"Fantastic. Hopefully we can trust him," Blake replied. "Come on."

He walked over to the computer and fired it up.

 _Test Subject B4 has shown subtle resistance to flame weaponry. This leads me to believe that the alien entities DNA structure can be altered to become more resilient to certain forms of flame attack. Test Subject B4 is currently being held in Chamber Three._

"Oh _wonderful!_ " Blake cried.

"What?" Price asked, startled.

"God...read this," Blake muttered, marching over to the switches. He flipped the ninth one, since they were in reverse order, and Price joined him.

"This sucks," he said.

"Yeah, tell me about it. Come on, let's go get this soldier," Blake replied.

They hurried down the rest of the stairs and came into the first chamber. The soldier stood there, waiting for them, a thin pale man looking very unhappy and nervous, clenching his fists. He was unarmed.

"Who are you?" he asked, looking at Blake.

"Captain Blake, Special Forces. Let's skip the song and dance, I need to test you," Blake replied. He'd pulled out the kit on the way down, his last one.

"Whoa, wait a minute-" the soldier said.

"Parnov," Price said, taking a step closer.

"It's Parnevik," the soldier replied. "Look, I'm not-"

"This isn't a negotiation," Blake replied.

Parnevik looked like he was going to panic or attack them. And that's exactly what happened, except it was nothing like Blake imagined would happen. Abruptly, he balled up his fist and made a motion like he was throwing something at them. Blake dove out of the way, and stared in horror as he realized Parnevik hadn't thrown something, his hand had _detached_ and flew at him. Price screamed and opened fire.

Blake scrambled to his feet and switched to his flamethrower. He lit Parnevik up, who had already begun emitting a high-pitched shriek and was shuddering violently. It lit up like a torch and collapsed after taking only a few steps.

"Get it! Get it!" Price screamed, backing away from Parnevik's hand. It was crawling around like an oversized spider on the deckplates. Blake torched it and stepped back as it emitted its own high-pitched shrieking noise.

"Holy shit," he whispered, horrified. "These things just keep getting weirder and weirder."

Price nodded blankly, still staring at the small, flaming hand.

"Well, let's get to work."

The next half an hour was frustrating and terrifying. They slowly worked their way through each of the test chambers, hosing down the creatures that occupied them, marching up and down the stairwell, having to open the chambers up one at a time. The only real problem they ran into was when they hit Chamber Three.

"I don't want to do this," Price said.

"Me neither. You're going to stay here, in Chamber Nine, I'll go lure it out, try to kill it, back up to here. If it's still alive when I get here, you'll need to help," Blake replied.

Price sighed, the nodded. "I'm ready."

Blake made sure that he was ready, getting his MP-5 in his hands. He figured what he needed to do was really hose the ugly thing down with bullets first. Then, as he approached Chamber Three, another idea suddenly hit him as he remembered he had a single incendiary grenade left. He pulled it out and pulled the pin, then tossed it into the chamber. There was a warning grunt from the Walker within, then a massive explosion.

A second later, the beast rushed out of the chamber, a pillar of flames. Blake immediately opened fire. He backed up, working carefully along his route towards Price. The Walker was still coming at him, still strong. He emptied his magazine and let the gun drop, quickly switching to his flamethrower. He squeezed the trigger, spraying the thing down with more flames. As he stepped into the next chamber, abruptly he tripped over something.

"Shit!" he screamed, falling back.

The Walker towered over him, still on fire, screaming furiously, arms raised for the killing blow...then a hole appeared in its misshapen chest, and another, and another. The beast fell back, finally beginning to succumb to the flames. Price kept walking in, firing round after round until he'd emptied the pistol.

A long moment passed, both men waiting, then Blake climbed back to his feet. "Let's go get Faraday and get the hell out of here."

They found Faraday in the final chamber. He seemed to be waiting for them. He was a white-haired, small-framed man in his early sixties wearing a green uniform. He was unarmed and didn't seem all that concerned.

"Doctor Faraday," Blake said.

He nodded. "Yes. Judging by your outfit and demeanor, I'd say Whitley finally got around to the portion of the plan where he pretended to ask for help. I'd guess...Special Forces?"

"Yeah...come on, you're coming with us, Doc," Blake replied.

"Not like I have much choice."

"Here," Blake said, passing him the kit. "Time to prove yourself."

"Fine," Faraday replied.

He tested himself and nothing happened. Blake and Price let out sighs. They began marching him back through the chambers.

"Fess up, Faraday. Exactly what have you been doing down here?"

"Well, I guess it doesn't matter all that much now. Several months ago a partial transmission from Outpost Thirty One was received by a Genetic Inc research facility. They managed to get the phrases 'alien' 'lifeform' and 'biological hazard' out of it. Gen Inc is one of the largest biological research and pharmaceutical corporations on the planet. Obviously, they leaped at the chance. They have contacts in the government and the military, as they provided the United States military with all sorts of wonderful drugs. Certain elements of the government and military wanted this situation taken advantage of. They immediately began moving certain assets down to Antarctica, building research facilities, hiring mercenaries and researchers."

"So why did they call us down here?" Blake asked.

"Because they needed it to look legitimate. The project has gotten a little out of hand. There has been some collateral damage and right now is about the time questions were going to start being asked about the missing outposts. You see, winter basically immobilizes this entire continent. So, in theory, an outpost could be totally destroyed, but no one would know about it for months because no one is going to come looking because the weather is too dangerous. And radio contact is totally useless too. It's not uncommon for weeks or even months to pass without hearing a peep on the radio. Now that winter is dying down, the questions will start. The government and military need to act like they have it under control, hence the Special Forces teams," Faraday replied.

"Jesus...they were sending us into a meat grinder," Blake muttered.

"Yes, basically."

While they were talking, the trio worked their way back up to the observation deck, then up higher, heading ultimately back towards the hatch Blake had originally come through. Faraday's confessions chilled him to the bone.

"So what's the endgame? What's the point of all this?" he asked.

"Isn't it obvious? Power. Imagine how greatly our understanding of biology could become. We could cure all sorts of diseases, cancers, viruses. We might even be able to banish death itself. Imagine immortal soldiers, chemical warfare would be a thing of the past, peace would come to the planet. Imagine one, unified government. No more diseases, no more genocide..."

"You're insane," Price whispered.

"Yeah, cause things are so great right now," Faraday snapped. "We've got tribal warfare over in Africa, paranoid Russians with their fingers on the trigger for nuclear warfare, a hundred thousand different diseases, viruses, cancers, illnesses that cripple, kill, maim, dement and destroy. We could put an end to all of that."

"I'd love to keep arguing with you but shut up," Blake said.

He could hear footfalls up ahead. They were almost back to the Prep Lab. "Be careful," Blake said, glancing back. "And keep an eye on him."

Price nodded. Blake walked up to the door and opened it. The container in the depression in the center of the room was broken open and an enormous Walker was plodding around the room. It had two long arms, ash-gray skin and a horrific, twisted caricature of a face. He mentally checked his resources: half a canister of fuel in the flamethrower, one magazine left in the MP-5. The rest of it had been used up fighting through the test chambers. Not good. But he did have the drop on the creature. It was on the other side of the depression, which had a sort of fenced railing around it. The creature couldn't easily get to him.

Blake stood at the edge of the depression, aimed and fired. The Walker went up like a torch. It began coming for him but he was already backing up. By the time it reached the spot where he'd been, its body gave up the ghost and it collapsed.

"So, _this_ is what you enjoy researching so much?" Blake asked, pointing at the melting Walker.

"You don't find them fascinating?" Faraday asked. "The fact that they can so quickly mutate into whatever shape they want, whatever shape they need?"

"I find it terrifying...come on," Blake replied.

They made it back to the hatch he'd originally dropped through. Price went up first, then Faraday, then Blake.

"So you're...okay with how things have turned out?" Blake asked as they headed back up towards the warehouse.

"Of course not! It was sloppy work! Several Imitators slipped through the testing net and just look at this horrible mess! No, a much tighter form of control needs to be instituted if we're going to get a good look at this organism. This wanton slaughter and destruction is utterly deplorable and I intend to have a word with Whitley about all this," Faraday replied.

"I intend to have a word or two with the good Colonel myself," Blake muttered.

"I wouldn't mind saying a few things to the bastard either," Price said.

They came up out of the ice tunnel and moved into the warehouse. As Blake prepared to scout the area, he suddenly found himself staring at the Whitley. The Colonel was dressed in white camouflage and flanked by a pair of men who were covered head to toe in black and green uniforms, gasmasks and helmets included.

They both held MP-5s and were covering Blake.

"You," Blake said, raising his MP-5.

"I wouldn't," Whitley replied, snapping his fingers.

Abruptly, the lights overhead shot on. Blake glanced up. There were easily two dozen soldiers surrounding them, standing on the catwalks and atop the shipping containers. They all looked identical, hidden behind military gear, all of them armed.

"I see," Blake muttered, slowly lowering his gun.

He suddenly felt drained, exhausted, defeated. He tossed aside his rifle and his flamethrower. He knew this was a fight he couldn't win. Price did the same.

"Smart move," Whitley said. "You've lasted a lot longer than I thought you would. It's too bad about the others, about what happened here but...that's all right. We have significantly more resources committed to this operation now that an outbreak has occurred and I have physical evidence of just how bad this can get. Those Senators and Generals up in Washington aren't quite so comfortable now. But..." he pulled out his pistol, "I'm afraid the time has come to bring you back into the operation, though not quite as you've intended, I imagine."

He aimed at Blake and squeezed the trigger.

There was a sudden and sharp pain in his neck, and then the world went dark.


	9. Chapter 09: Betrayal

For Blake, the process of waking was normally a quick and efficient one. Being a soldier in the Special Forces meant that it was kind of a job requirement. So he was having a difficult time understanding why it was suddenly so damned hard for him to just _wake up_. He was conscious, only not really. It was like he was still half-asleep, like he'd awoken in the middle of the night after blacking out from drinking too much. He was confused, disoriented. Hands were touching him, carrying him. He tried to struggle, but he had no strength.

Consciousness faded, the world drifted into darkness several times. He woke up a few more times, once in the back of a truck, once being carried across snow, once being dragged down a hallway, once more in some kind of stark white room.

Once, he thought he heard a gunshot.

Suddenly, he opened his eyes and his head was clearer. He found himself staring up at a dangling piece of steel machinery that ended in a long, sharp needle. It was dark and something was shooting blue-white sparks from somewhere. Blake groaned. His head hurt, his neck hurt, well, everything hurt, honestly. As the world slid into focus, he sat up, feeling the sudden urge to move. A sense of danger and fear permeated through him.

He took a quick look around. What immediately stood out was how high-tech and glossy everything looked. It was almost like he'd stepped into some futuristic sci-fi movie. He'd awoken on an examination table in the center of the room. Everything seemed to be built around it. Ahead of him was a large bank of huge computer monitors that were still functional. They displayed all sorts of what appeared to be x-rays and other medical crap. He studied it all for a moment, then turned away from it, looking around further.

A few thin countertops that seemed to be built straight into the wall with nothing beneath them occupied a few open spaces around the edge of the room. There were three doors. Two of them, one ahead and one behind, were large, broad doors with windows built into him, the other was actually a doorway, built into the wall at the foot of the examination table. It looked like it might lead to an observation room.

A few of the thin counter slabs supported binders and computers, but the computers were all dark. The blue-white sparks seemed to be coming from the observation room. He decided to take a quick look through the windows in the other larger doors first. The one at the back of the room seemed to lead to a small, long transitional chamber with another broad door across the way and another open door to the left.

A few Scuttlers crawled around on the floor, twining among a pair of corpses. Not good. Wherever he was had been compromised, infected, overrun obviously. That thought sent a wave of cold roaring through his body. He checked his pockets, felt for his backpack. The pack was gone, his pockets empty. All he had on him was his cold weather gear, which was making him hot. He ignored the heat for the moment, slowly checked every single pocket, but came up empty. Not a bullet to his name. Blake sighed and thought fiercely for a moment.

He needed to find survivors, flame-based weaponry, test kits, a way out of here. He needed to find and stop Whitley. A familiar sound came to him. Something was thudding around, behind him. Blake whirled around, suddenly terrified. Beyond the window in the far door, he saw a dark shape moving. Hurrying over, Blake studied it.

A Walker.

It was one of those hideous dog-headed, torso-tail ones, like the pair he'd encountered back at Dronning Maud, when Williams had forced him to eliminate them before he'd help out. The creature didn't seem to notice him. It turned around and began walking away on stilted legs, stumbling slightly. There was another body out in the corridor.

"Great," Blake muttered.

He walked over to the small observation room and looked around. A few things leaped to his attention. The first was a broken, sparking fusebox. The other was a window that looked into a small room, what looked to be an emergency shower area. Standing there was a man in a white jumpsuit. He stared at Blake. He opened his mouth to say something, but the room was apparently soundproof. Blake pointed at his ear and shook his head. The man pointed out, into the hallway where the Walker was. Blake looked at it, then nodded, then held up his hand, the sign to wait. The man reluctantly nodded. It seemed he was trapped.

At least he wasn't alone here.

Blake turned his attention to the fusebox. He walked over to it and studied it. After a moment, he decided he could fix it. He spent a few minutes working on it, only singeing his fingers twice, and abruptly the lights snapped to life. He closed the box and turned around. Immediately, he saw something he'd missed in the main room.

A corpse, lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

Frowning, Blake moved cautiously over to it. He kicked it over onto its back, and found the lifeless gray eyes of Doctor Faraday staring up at him. An ugly hole was in his forehead. So _that_ was the shot he'd heard in his dreams.

"Who shot you?" Blake muttered as he knelt and cautiously patted the man down. But his pockets were empty, too.

Blake sighed and stood back up. Now what? He noticed a blinking computer monitor and walked over to it. Booting it up, he found a typed out message.

 _Dr. Shaun Faraday_

 _Chief Medical Researcher_

 _Gen-Inc._

 _Initial bio profile of Subject 873 (R. C. Whitley) suggests a high risk of cellular rejection if implanted with the B4 Strain of the Cloud Virus. This is by no means conclusive but it leads me to think that Subject 873 may not be suitable due to illness and company status._

Whitley was trying to injected himself with the damned virus? Was he really that insane? Did he think he could control it?

Blake suddenly had a vision of Whitley and Faraday standing in this room. It made sense that Whitley would be furious with Faraday if he turned him down, if he really was that nuts to implant himself with the virus. Insane and angry were a bad combination. Had Whitley shot Faraday in the head? He suddenly remembered Whitley shooting him in the neck. He reached up and rubbed his neck. It must've been a tranquilizer dart.

Well, he sure hadn't shot Faraday with a dart.

Blake shook his head, turned from the monitor.

Now what?

He couldn't go into the room with the Scuttlers. No weapons, no way to take them down. Besides, that area looked like a dead end anyway. That just left...he turned and looked at the Walker, still stomping around. How to get past it? He thought for a long moment, then finally came to an unhappy conclusion. He was going to have to lure it in here, then run out and close the door behind him. Really stupid, really dangerous.

And really his only choice.

Blake groaned and walked over to the door. He stared out at the ugly thing. It seemed to have finally noticed him. He popped his neck, his back, his shoulders, his fingers, tried to loosen up, get ready for some running. Finally, realizing that he wasn't going to be okay with this no matter how long he prepared himself, Blake hit the button next to the door and rushed back into the room, behind the examination table.

The Walker let out a shriek of triumph and raced into the room. Blake waited to see which direction it would choose to go around the table. It broke left, he broke right, ran out of the room and slammed his fist on the close button once he was outside. Blake let out a heavy sigh of relief, then leaped back, startled, as a door to his immediate left opened up. The man in the white jumpsuit stepped out, holding an MP-5, covering Blake.

"That was brave," he said.

"Yeah," Blake replied, studying him. He was older, in his mid forties, his head shaved bald. There was a red cross on the front of his suit, next to the Gen Inc. biohazard logo. "Who are you?"

"My name's Falchek, I'm a medic here...I saw them bring you in. I overheard them talking. You're Special Forces?" Falchek replied.

Blake nodded. "Captain Blake. I've been fucked over by Whitley."

"Haven't we all?" Falchek muttered.

"Yeah...so, can I assume that you think we should work together to get out alive and put a stop to Whitley's madness?"

Falchek nodded. "Yeah, definitely. After the shit I've seen...but you'll need to keep your distance. I know how this whole thing works."

"Got it...would you mind giving me the MP-5? I _am_ a soldier," Blake said.

Falchek seemed to consider for a moment, then slowly shook his head. "Sorry."

"Fair enough. Well...let's get to work."

They began slowly and methodically searching the corridor they were in. It was L-shaped and there were five doors in all. The Walker was trapped behind one, and Falchek had just emerged from another. The real bummer came when Blake realized that all three of the other doors were locked down as well. All they had for company in the corridor was a stack of bloodied crates, a sparking computer atop a desk, a lonely, decapitated corpse and a pair of broken fuseboxes that he didn't know how to fix. Nor did Falchek.

What struck Blake as odd was the very nature of the facility itself. Everything had a slick, clean, smooth feel to it. The floor was white tiles, the walls and ceiling made of metal plating. The doors were what stuck out the most. They looked like something out of that old sci-fi show, Star Trek. They were on rails and made of apparently bulletproof glass framed by cold steel. They appeared to meet in the middle and, when opened, parted and slid into the walls. The Gen-Inc biohazard logo was plastered across each of these doors.

Blake couldn't break them down and he couldn't get them open. He figured out that the broken fuseboxes seemed to control them.

"Fuck," he muttered, stumped. "Now what?"

"Isn't there some kind of other room in the surgical bay you came out of?" Falchek asked.

Blake frowned. They'd come to stand back in front of the large, broad door that he'd locked the Walker behind. Both of them stared through the strip of glass that was level with their heads. The Walker stared back at them, black eyes full of fury and insane, alien hatred. Blake heaved a sigh. Falchek was right.

"How do we get past the thing?" Falchek muttered.

"I have an idea. It's dangerous and stupid, but it looks like it's the only choice we've got," Blake replied.

"What? What idea?" Falchek asked.

Blake explained the idea to him, and Falchek agreed with him on both accounts. It was dangerous, stupid and their only option. Falchek was even nice enough to offer him the gun, but Blake refused, both wanting to earn the medic's trust and knowing that it wouldn't do any good either way. He made Falchek retreat as far as he could, down the corridor and around the corner, far out of sight. Then he made his way over to the garage-style door.

Just like before, he knew he wouldn't ever really be ready for it, so he just did it. Blake slapped the open button on the door and it slid open. The Walker let out a horrible shriek of triumph and charged for him. Blake retreated into the emergency shower room he'd first located Falchek in and the Walker made a beeline for him.

Had to time it just right...

Blake dove in the narrow opening between the Walker and the doorway just as it came in. He felt the displacement of air as it swung at him with one twisted, misshapen arm. He tucked into a roll, hit the floor, scrambled to his feet and slammed his fist on the close button. The doors snapped shut. Just in time, too.

The Walker had turned around and was beating its deformed arms against the glass, smearing them with alien gore.

"Suck it, ugly," Blake muttered. "It worked!" he called.

A few seconds later, Falchek emerged. He was grinning. "Man, that was crazy brave!" he said, then laughed, relieving the tension that had been building between them.

"Yep...now let's see if we can't find our way out of here," Blake replied.

They moved back across the room, around the examination table Blake had woken up on, and peered in through the slit window. Blake regarded the Scuttlers crawling across the floor of the narrow antechamber. He pointed this out to Falchek.

"I see 'em," he said.

"Can you get them? How good a shot are you?" Blake asked.

"I _was_ in the National Guard for two years before this," Falchek replied, a little touchily.

"Okay, okay, fine." He took a step back and let his hand hover over the access button. "You ready?"

"Yep," Falchek replied, shouldering his rifle.

Blake hit the button and Falchek opened fire. A few spurts of gunfire later, three very dead Scuttlers lay splattered across the white-tiled floor. Blake stepped into the room and looked around, seeing if there were any others, but he could see none. There were no guns or bullets lying around on the floor, but he _did_ spy a flashlight of the same make and model as his previous one. He knelt, grabbed it and slipped it into his front pocket.

"Hey, there's someone in there," Falchek said, staring in through another slit window.

"It's not Whitley is it?" Blake asked, joining him.

"No, someone in a blue jumpsuit, an engineer," Falchek replied. "Hey, I bet he can fix those damned fuseboxes!"

"That's what I'm hoping, but adding another person in the mix is going to make this dangerous. We need kits and a damned flamethrower," Blake said, opening up the door. He took a step into the room and then stopped.

"Holy shit," he whispered.

For a moment, he didn't see the man with the black beard in the blue jumpsuit standing at the back of the room. Lining the long walls on either side of them were glass tubes filled with some kind of bluish liquid. In each tube floated a horror. One was a head with a thick nest of tentacles sprouting out the bottom. Another was a thick, brutish hand with two-inch long claws. Another was a thin torso with a third, gnarled arm growing from the chest.

"Yeah, and I've been stuck in here with these things for an hour," the man said. "I recognize you...Falcon or Falner, right?" the man said.

"Falchek."

"Right, sorry. I see you around sometimes. Who are you?" the man asked.

"Blake, Special Forces. Let's skip it and cut to the meat. We need to get out of here and we need your help. I imagine you know about the infection?"

"Well...yeah," the man replied, gesturing to the tanks around them. "Name's Dixon, by the way. I'm an engineer that works in this department, these tanks, specifically. I make sure they don't break down. I was in here when the base went into lockdown."

"Great, there's a few fuseboxes we'd like you to look at, Dixon," Blake replied.

Dixon nodded and began crossing the room, coming towards them slowly. "I'd love to. Pretty much anything to get out of this nightmare room."

Blake studied Dixon as they made their way back to the main hallway. He was of average height, pretty well built, his muscles looking solid beneath his jumpsuit. He had short, black hair and a small black beard and mustache.

" _That_ is the armory," Dixon said with a grin, pointing to the door that was directly across from the surgical bay. He immediately set to work fixing up the fusebox. Blake took a moment to study both men. Falchek was staring at the Walker, Dixon seemed to have ignored it. Something about Dixon was putting him off. It was probably the way he totally ignored the locked up, clearly visible Walker, or how calmly he'd spent an hour trapped in that nightmare room. But if he was infected, then wouldn't he be acting more freaked out?

Unless an infected entity would think of that and was acting this way on purpose...Blake suppressed a sigh.

This was getting confusing. He wanted his damned test kits back.

"Got it!" Dixon said.

There was a hum of power and when Blake pressed the activation button, the door slid open. He felt relief flood through him as he stepped into the armory. Shelves ringed the room and there were guns on those shelves, glorious guns.

Everything a growing soldier could want.

"Hell _yes!_ " Blake cried joyously.

Immediately, he grabbed a flamethrower and loaded it with a fuel canister from a nearby box of them. He pocketed three more. He then grabbed a long-barreled, gleaming silver shotgun and hastily began feeding shells into the gun, eight in all. He grabbed another sixteen shells, pocketing them, and turned to face the others.

Dixon was holding a pistol now and Falchek was just finishing grabbing more ammunition for his MP-5. Both men seemed happy, but wary now. It was obvious who had the power in the group, now that Blake had the flamethrower.

"Are you okay with taking orders?" Blake asked after a long moment.

"I am," Falchek replied.

Dixon seemed to consider it for a moment, then nodded slowly. "So long as they make sense, I guess I am," he replied.

"Good, because I'm going to need all the help I can get. Obviously, Whitley has lost it. This infection cannot get off this continent. We need to do whatever we can to put a stop to it, to get the word out and quarantine Antarctica. Now...come on, let's go."


	10. Chapter 10: Escape

"So...we need a plan," Blake said as they stepped out of the armory, back into the corridor. He glanced over nervously at the Walker, which had ceased trying to break the door down and instead was simply glaring at them with inhuman vehemence.

"I thought you just outlined the plan," Dixon replied.

"No, I outlined our _goal._ But I'm basically new to this place, I have no idea where we are, beyond an illegal research facility in Antarctica. You two work here. I imagine you can give me an idea of this building, maybe some surrounding buildings?"

"Well...there isn't too much on this level. There's an elevator we'll need to get to, but there's also a big quarantine room with all these holding cells, a computer room and a few dormitories we should check out," Dixon said.

"I know there's a big underground portion of the base we'll probably want to head for. If Whitley's getting out of here, it's through there, because it connects to an airfield. They have all sorts of hangars and buildings and shit loaded up with supplies," Falchek said. "I've been there a few times. Sometimes, when they need a ton of equipment moved fast, they haul in anyone who happens to be available. So we should probably head there."

"All right...sounds like a plan. We'll finish searching this area, then head into the underground," Blake replied.

They struck off down the main corridor, coming to its bend and turning. As soon as Dixon saw the sparking fusebox that would admit them access to another corridor to the right, he made a beeline for it, intent on fixing it. Blake let him work, instead focusing his attention on the other door, the one dead ahead. Falchek came to stand next to him.

"That's where the elevator is. It's how I got down here," he said. "Do you think we should go up? There's dormitories up there, other levels..."

"No," Blake replied. "We don't have time. We have to get to that airfield. Even if Whitley isn't there...they might be trying to send samples back to the real world and our primary goal is stopping this infection from spreading. If it got out...it might even be too late right now, but we have to try. Dixon, how's it going?"

"Done," Dixon replied as the closed the little door on the fusebox.

Blake nodded and moved back to the other door. He hit the access button and stepped into another corridor of large white paneling that curved out of sight to the left. He spied at least two doors along the right wall.

"This is the dormitories," Dixon said. "This is where I sleep sometimes. They rotate us out."

Blake nodded and moved to the first door. He peered cautiously in through the glass and saw nothing actually alive inside small room, then hit the access button. A pair of bunks, built into the back wall, were bloodied. Their sheets and pillows torn and red. An octagonal table with a few knocked over foldout chairs dominated the center of the room. Besides that, there was a desk with a computer sitting atop it to the right.

"I couldn't imagine sleeping here," Blake muttered. "And that's saying something. I can sleep pretty much anywhere."

"It sucked," Dixon replied.

Blake saw something written on the screen. He checked it out and saw that the file was labeled **Hanson's Journal**. Apparently someone had forgotten to log off after writing in their journal. He took a minute to read the latest entry.

 _I can hear things at night that freak me out. It's all so weird...people are disappearing all the time, but I don't know why. What are they doing to us? I've gotta get out of this place. There's little hope for that though. I despair of my chances for survival._

"Apparently this guy thought it sucked more," Blake said.

Dixon leaned in and scanned the screen. "Huh. I remember Hanson. He was another engineer. Disappeared yesterday. I wonder what happened to him."

"No time for that now, come on," Blake replied.

As they moved further down the corridor, they saw it had taken a lot of damage. A fire had burned at some point, leaving half the passageway coated in soot and ash. Two skeletal remains, twined together, with extra limbs, lay up against one of the walls. Blake and the others checked out another two dormitory rooms, but found nothing worthwhile.

They hit a dead end in the form of another door at the end of the hallway with some brutalized, sparking wiring where the access button should have been. Blake stared in through the window, unable to see pretty much anything save for a pair of gray partition walls, the kind they used as dividers in office complexes between the desks.

"Can you fix it?" he asked.

Dixon looked at it for a moment, then shook his head. "No. Not enough tools or time, really," he replied.

Blake sighed. "I hope there's nothing back there we need."

"Well, if there is, I know there's a ventilation duct that connects to it from the holding cells room," Dixon replied.

"Great," Blake muttered.

They retraced their steps and came back to the final door that led to the elevator. Blake opened it and stepped into a small antechamber. There was the elevator, a pair of silver steel doors to glistened dully beneath the lights. He reached out and hit the button, hoping against hope that they would work. Nothing happened.

"Shit," Blake muttered.

"Okay, turns out there _is_ something we'll need in that room," Dixon said. "It looks like the elevator's lost power. The only way to turn it back on is to reset the junction box in that back office...which means we'll need to take those vents after all."

Blake groaned. "Fantastic, cause I was really hoping to spend time today crawling around in a dark duct...let's go."

They moved through another door to the right that led them down another white, paneled corridor. Blake finally came to the holding chambers. The room was easily the biggest of any in the facility he'd seen so far. It was twenty five or thirty feet tall and easily a hundred feet wide. A pair of ramps, one on either side of the doorway, led up to a makeshift second story. A catwalk ringed the upper tier of the room, leading to a dozen different cell doors. Most of them were closed and seemed to be empty, but he could hear something moving around up there. The ground floor was occupied by a desk with a pair of computers on it, a whiteboard with all sorts of x-rays and medical readouts tacked to it, and a pair of huge examination tables with restraining straps.

A great deal of blood had been splashed across the floor.

"We've got company!" Falchek called.

Half a dozen Scuttlers seemed to come out of nowhere and everywhere, from beneath the examination tables, behind the desk, below the ramps. Blake raised his shotgun and fired, blowing the nearest one into hamburger meat. He shifted aim and fired again, the shotgun making a great explosion of noise as he watched another Scuttler disappear into a plume of black gore and free-flying fleshy chunks. Beside him, Falchek and Dixon made short work of the others. Blake waited a moment longer, then lowered the shotgun.

"Hey, who's down there?!" someone called.

"Help us!" another voice said.

Blake tensed up. He glanced towards the ring of cell doors on the second story. "Great," he muttered. "More potentials...just hang tight!" he called. "We'll get you out in a minute!"

He considered his options for a moment, then finally settled his gaze on the pair of computers. Maybe _they_ would have information, possibly a list of personnel supposed to be up there and whether or not they were intentionally exposed to the infection. This definitely seemed like the kind of place for that level of experimentation.

The first computer contained a report from Faraday.

Possibly his final report.

 _I am getting increasingly worried about the mental state of Commander Whitley. I believe that he has injected himself with the B4 Strain of the Cloud Virus even after I personally refused him after the tests. I currently have him under observation and his behavior is becoming highly unpredictable, perhaps even dangerous. In addition to this I am getting varied reports about his behavior from different security personnel. I'm not sure whom to trust on this and may have to issue a request for termination of things get out of hand._

 _The experiments on Test Subject 874 (Blake) have proved inconclusive but there seems to be a minute trace of a cellular anomaly that could be related to the Cloud Virus. I will need to do further tests as the subject has had an unusual amount of exposure to the virus in its many forms._

Blake felt a wave of pure icy fear shoot through him. Was he infected? He reached up and turned off the monitor, trying to play it cool. If they found out...he moved over to the other monitor and fired it up. This one showed him a list of names, who was supposed to be in what cell. He recognized two of the names. The first was Hanson's. So _that's_ what happened to the engineer. The other was his own name. He was listed as being in Cell Ten. Blake memorized the list and then spent a minute extra trying to see if there was any further data on who might be infected or part of some experiment, but there was nothing. Frustrated, he signed off.

As he prepared to head up, something caught his eye. He felt tentative excitement creep through him as he approached a boxy metal shelf next to the desk with the computers. The bottom shelf was largely hidden in shadow, but he saw something poking out of it, a glint of metal. Blake hurried over to it and crouched. He flicked on his flashlight and grinned in triumph. A pair of test kits! They looked clean, pristine and ready to go.

"Look what I found," he said, turning and holding them up.

"Thank god," Dixon muttered.

"There's only two, though," Falchek replied.

"Yeah, and we'll decide what to do with them once we free the others. Come on."

Blake led them up to the second story. His first objective was to check the contents of every cell. There were, he saw, ten in all. Six of them were empty, two held mutated former humans and two held still intact humans that may or may not be infected. The first man they released wore a green jumpsuit. He was a slight Asian man with a crewcut and a no-nonsense expression on his face. He seemed to size them all up immediately as he stepped cautiously out of his cell, and his gaze lingered on Blake's flamethrower.

"My name is Fisk," he said after a moment.

"Good to meet you, Fisk. Let's free the other guy and head back downstairs for a little meeting of the minds," Blake replied.

The second man was thin, pale and fidgety. He wore a blue jumpsuit identical to Dixon's and introduced himself as Stanmore. Blake led the four men downstairs, wondering how he was going to handle this. He stood behind the desk with the computers and had the four men line up on the other side. He stared at them, they stared back at him with varying degrees of distrust. He set both test kits down on the top of the desk.

"Okay, now, the first choice is obvious. Since I'm in charge and I'm the one doling out orders, I should prove my humanity," Blake said.

"Who said you were in charge?" Fisk replied immediately, the suspicion naked in his voice.

"Those two agreed to follow my orders," Blake replied, pointing to Falchek and Dixon. Fisk stared at them and they both nodded back to him. "I'm with Special Forces," Blake added. "You can assume I know what I'm doing."

Mentioning Special Forces seemed to assuage some of Fisk's hostility. He didn't say anything else, but the look of frustrated paranoia didn't leave his face. When no one said anything further, Blake grabbed the kit and stuck it in his arm. He pulled the trigger and prepared for the worst. He still _felt_ human, still felt like his thoughts were his thoughts, his actions his own actions. But if that virus was inside of him, it might react poorly. He kept his face neutral, waiting as he pulled the kit out, watching the glass.

Thirty seconds of silence passed.

"Okay, I'm human," he said, setting the kit down. "Proof enough?"

Every man gave a nod of assent. Blake nodded back. "Now, the matter of who to test with this one, remaining kit. All I can say for sure is that I trust Falchek...to a degree. When we first met, we were alone and I was without a weapon. He could have taken me at any time and there was nothing I could do to stop him. So, I don't think we'll waste our only kit on Falchek. But that just leaves the three of you..."

He'd been thinking about this since he found the kits, and, unfortunately, he had absolutely no way whittling the number down any further. Either of the three men could be infected. So, he grabbed a piece of paper off the desktop, turned his back on them and ripped off three long shreds of paper. Then he ripped one of those in half.

"We draw straws," he said, turning back around, holding up his fist, each of the three papers looking almost the exact same length in his closed fist. "Shortest piece of paper has to undergo the test...unless anyone has a better idea."

No one did, though the men didn't look happy about it.

One by one, carefully, they each approached Blake and took one of the shreds of paper. Once they were finished, it was revealed that Stanmore had drawn the short one. Immediately, Fisk and Dixon backed away from him.

Stanmore looked at the little shred of paper in his hand. "Well...fair's fair, I guess," he said. "I'm ready," he added, stepping forward.

Blake nodded and kept his flamethrower in one hand, the test kit in the other hand. He stuck the needle in and squeezed the trigger. As he was pulling it back out, the test kit began vibrating violently in his hand. He dropped it as a high-pitched shriek sounded. Stanmore's face went blank and he began convulsing.

Blake didn't give him a chance.

He aimed and fired, immediately lighting the beast up with his flamethrower. The men all backed up, watching the inhuman imitator burn. When the body had dropped to the bloody floor and the flames had gone out, everyone regrouped.

"Well...at least we know no one else is infected," Dixon said.

"How do we know that?" Blake replied.

"If any of us were one of these things, then, when Stanmore was exposed, logically, we would have all transformed and tried to attack the non-infected," Dixon explained.

Blake considered this for a moment, then slowly shook his head. "No, we don't know that. I mean, we don't know about how these creatures think. What if they're incredibly selfish? Based on what I've learned so far, they only transform if they absolutely have to. Assumptions get you dead, Dixon. Remember that. Now...we get to deal with something truly shitty. We need to gain access to a back office, and the only way is through a vent in this room. Which means we all need to crawl through a vent duct together."

"What if half of us stay and half go?" Fisk said. "Falchek could stay with one of us since you trust him," he added.

"I trust him to a certain degree...not enough to leave him alone with either of you. No offense, Falchek. And the last time I left two people by themselves...it didn't work out so well. So you're all coming with me. Oh...and Fisk."

"Yeah?" the man asked cautiously.

"Here." Blake passed him his shotgun and all the shells for it. Fisk accepted it cautiously.

"Thanks," he said.

"So what's your story?" Blake asked as they tracked down the ventilation grate. "How'd you end up down here?"

"I used to be in the Marines," Fisk replied. "Four years. Got up to Sergeant. I made a call that didn't agree with my superiors. We were in...another country, providing assistance for their government, helping them fight against some rebels. It was all pretty shitty...but then I found out the unit I was working with from the local military...some of them would go out at night and kill rebel member's families, whenever they found them. Make it look like a robbery gone bad or something. I found out by them taking me along one night, thought I'd like to get in on the action...I ended up killing the soldiers instead of the civilians when I found out. Shot all four of them in the head, helped the family hide the bodies, told them to forget this ever happened. After that, I got out, went to the private sector. Got bored, came down here."

"You came down to Antarctica because you were bored?" Blake asked.

"Yeah. I figured that whatever they were doing was dangerous, given the amount of money they were hurling around," Fisk replied.

Blake shrugged, supposing it made enough sense. They found the vent grate and pried it off. Blake ducked down and pointed his flashlight inside. It looked clear enough. He crouched down, got onto his hands and knees and squeezed himself inside. He looked back over his shoulder and made sure everyone was in with him, then began crawling as fast as he could. The noise was frustrating, the thin metal making loud sounds every time it shifted. He began to sweat badly as he crawled along its length, both from the heat and the tension.

Finally, after what seemed like ages, he found the corresponding vent grate and kicked it off. Crawling out, he stood and found himself atop a platform that over looked the office room he was so eager to get into. He spied a pair of desks and Dixon's vaunted fusebox secreted away behind the divider partitions he'd seen earlier. There didn't seem to be anything down there, so Blake lowered himself down the ladder. He dropped off and watched the others join him. When Dixon came down, he walked over to the fusebox and set to work.

"So, how much do you know?" Blake asked Fisk while they waited.

"Enough. I know about the infection, the monsters...I worked over at the airfield, running security there. I saw some shit. I went to sleep last night and next thing I knew, I was waking up in that damned cell," Fisk replied, the fury evident in his voice.

"That sucks," Blake muttered. "How much do you know about the tunnels that connect this facility to the airfields?"

"Nothing. I only ever saw the airfields."

Blake sighed. "Well, I guess we'll find out together."

"Done!" Dixon called. There was a small hum of power and he rejoined them.

"All right, then. Let's get on it with it," Blake replied.


	11. Chapter 11: Beneath the Ice

The elevator was a pristine, shiny, smooth box of chrome that slid on its rails perfectly as it brought them down into the dark depths of hell that no doubt existed down there, buried beneath the antarctic ice. Blake felt his stomach grumbling and couldn't decide if it was from hunger or fear. Or maybe it was from exhaustion. He was suddenly grateful for that very long helicopter ride down there. Spending eighteen hours either asleep or otherwise immobile meant that he had a large reserve of energy. But he knew he'd need to eat and drink soon. The last thing he'd put in his stomach was that bottle of water at the fake weather research center.

That made him think of Pace and Williams...which made him think of the current group of men he was with. He still felt fairly confident that he could trust Falchek, but what about Fisk or Dixon? Either man had the complete and utter ability to be infected. To be one of those...Things, masquerading as a human being, right next to him. It was bad enough having to fight these mutated horrors and, he imagined soon, Whitley's goons, if those guys in gasmasks back at the warehouse were any indication, but he also couldn't trust his own men?

The elevator abruptly stopped and the doors slid smoothly open into what appeared to be some kind of basement region. The only thing in view was a dirty concrete wall and some thick pipes. Blake hesitated, he only had a flamethrower.

"Fisk," he whispered, then pointed sharply forward.

Fisk nodded, tucking his shotgun up into his shoulder. He moved to the edge of the open door, poked his head out, then moved out of the elevator. After a moment, he sounded the all-clear. Blake, Falchek and Dixon followed. The room they'd come to wasn't very big. It reminded Blake of the basement of an old apartment building he'd once lived in in New York. Concrete walls, pipes everywhere, railings separating the pipes from the rest of the room. There were only two doors, one on either end.

"Okay," Blake began. "Where-"

The door to the right suddenly burst open and a man in a suit of dark camouflage with a gasmask on rushed inside, toting an MP-5.

"I've found the targets!" he called, raising the gun. "Get in-" Abruptly, his head, gasmask and all, disappeared in a misty plume of crimson gore. The headless corpse dropped to the dusty concrete floor and twitched spasmodically.

"Hostiles!" Blake shouted, a little unnecessarily.

Another man stepped into the room and was cut down by a combination of Falchek's MP-5 fire and another two blasts from Fisk's shotgun. Blake raced forward and scooped up the first fallen soldier's machine gun. He had a clear view of the hallway beyond the door and saw three more men coming towards him.

Knowing that he had no chance to hide, he raised the machine gun and opened fire, squeezing the trigger and spraying the corridor down. The men all screamed as they were peppered with bullets. Fisk hurried up to join him and together they finished off the troopers. The hallway didn't extend very far, but Blake could hear an alarm cycling and a red light was flashing deeper within. He didn't feel like dealing with it for the moment, so he threw the switch next to the door and it slammed closed. Blake let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"Which way goes where?" he asked as he dropped to his knees in between the two corpses they'd produced that were actually in the room and began to carefully pat them down.

"The way you just closed leads deeper into the base. The other door leads to some kind of storage room, I think," Dixon replied.

"Great," Blake muttered. "Well, we'll check out the storage room, see if there's anything useful in it, then we'll deal with what's beyond that door."

He salvaged four magazines from the corpses and used one of them to reload the MP-5. At least he had an actual _gun_ now. He turned and led the men quickly across the room to the only other door. It opened to reveal a short length of concrete corridor, the only notable things being a decapitated corpse leaning up against the back wall and a door next to it, to the left. Blake hurried down the hall and saw the door had a window in it.

He peered cautiously in. No gasmask-wearing soldiers, just what appeared to be a large forklift hoisting a load of...something overhead. Blake activated the switch to open the door and stepped carefully inside.

"Okay, Fisk, Falchek, which our backs. Dixon, with me," Blake said.

The three men replied affirmatively. Blake led Dixon into the room and began walking around the forklift. There wasn't much to the area. To the left were a trio of huge, cylindrical tanks fitted up against the wall. To the right was a door with a sparking fusebox. Behind the forklift was a small, elevated room that looked a little like an observation area a foreman might stand in, overseeing his work space. Blake led Dixon up it.

Inside was a small bank of equipment and monitors, but they were all dark and dead. They weren't of any use, but Blake could finally see what was on top of the forklift. Three glass containers with white pedestals, each containing a chicken-legged Scuttler. They were all staring at Blake and Dixon. The engineer made a quiet sound as he saw them.

"Fuck-ugly things, aren't they?" he muttered.

"You don't seem bothered by them," Blake said.

"I am...I'm just not a very emotional guy. They freak me out, but I've seen a lot of shit. Watched a lot of movies, read a lot of books, you know? And I've already been working around them for close to a month now."

"Jesus, how long have they been down here, experimenting? This seems like a huge operation," Blake marveled.

"All I know is that they were already chugging along nicely when I first showed up, so probably longer than two months, maybe more than three," Dixon replied.

"Fuck...come on, let's see what's in that room, and then we press on."

They moved back down to the ground floor and Dixon quickly repaired the sparking fusebox. Blake stepped into the room beyond. It was very small, stuffed with crates and shelves, clearly a storage room. He cautiously poked through the supplies, determined not to let this venture be a total bust, and, after five minutes, was rewarded for his stubbornness. He found a trio of grenades tucked away behind a crate.

"Someone was saving up for a rainy day," he said, pocketing the grenades. They looked to be standard fragmentation grenades.

Dixon opened his mouth to say something, but abruptly the sound of gunfire cut through the air. The booming report of a shotgun and the pop-pop-pop of MP-5 fire. By the time he and Dixon had rushed back to where Fisk and Falchek were, they saw another pair of dead soldiers. Down the length of the passageway and across the original room, Blake could see that they'd gotten the door open. There didn't seem to be anyone else in his line of sight at least.

"Can we go?" Fisk asked.

"Yeah, let's go," Blake replied.

They went back to the room with the elevator and passed through it, pausing to police up more ammunition from the soldiers. By the time they'd reached the room with the blaring siren again, Blake had found another three magazines. He stood in the doorway to the corridor yet explored and felt a headache begin to well as the alarm continued to cycle. Frustrated, he raised his MP-5 and fired out a small slew of rounds at a red light down the way that was flashing in sync with the siren. Abruptly, the siren cut off.

"Thanks," Dixon muttered.

"Happy to help, now be ready," Blake replied.

The corridor continued for a good twenty feet, then veered sharply left. He made his way down it and pressed his back to the wall by the corner. In the dead silence of the corridor, he could hear nothing moving. Cautiously, he poked his head around and found himself staring down another length of corridor scattered with metal crates. No bad guys, though. Blake led his men down the corridor, staying cautious, until he came to another turn.

This one turned out to be a dead end...of sorts.

"Well...this sucks," Falchek muttered.

There was a bulletproof pane of glass stuck into the wall to the left, showing them the way yet gone: another dirty, industrial looking room. The only way into it was through what looked to Blake to be a gas chamber where two Walkers lumbered around. Soot-stained nozzles were above their heads, and Blake suddenly realized it was a burn pit of some kind. He sat there, frowning, staring at it, the Walkers, the burn nozzles.

"Who the fuck would design something like this?" he muttered.

"I think it's some kind of counter-measure," Dixon said. "Kind of like an airlock, you know? Put people in there, make them do the test, if they fail, you can burn 'em up quick."

"Ugh...and now there's two of those damned things in there. I guess we'll have to kill them the hard way since I don't see any controls out here," Blake said. He walked over to the door, studied it for a long moment, then turned to Dixon. "How do you get it open?"

"I think the only way to get it open is from the other side," he said after considering it for a moment.

Blake groaned. "Well how the hell do we get over there then!? This glass is bulletproof, the walls look tough, and there's no-" His eyes fell on a ventilation grate in the wall, low to the floor, opposite the bulletproof window. "Aw crap," he muttered.

"What-oh yeah, that makes sense," Dixon said.

Blake considered it for a moment. He wasn't sure why, but his gut was telling him he needed to go alone. But that didn't make any sense. Unfortunately, the last time he hadn't listened to his instincts, people had gotten hurt.

"Stay here," he said, walking over to the grate and prying it off the wall.

"What? No way," Falchek said.

"Yeah, I thought we were sticking together," Fisk complained.

"I want you guys to stay here while I go figure this out," Blake replied. The men stared at him silently. He sighed. "Look, you _know_ I'm human, I've proved it, and it takes longer than the five minutes I was out of your actual eyesight. And Dixon was with me and you'll notice that I'm not taking him or trying to get one of you alone with me. Just...trust me on this."

"Fine," Falchek said after a moment.

"Whatever," Dixon said, frowning.

Fisk just nodded.

"Thanks. I'll be back."

"Hurry up," Fisk said, "you've got the only flame-based weapon."

That was something that, for some reason, hadn't occurred to Blake. He really was starting to lose it from lethargy and hunger. He nodded tightly and dropped down onto his hands and knees. Like before, crawling through the vent was about as appealing as it sounded, but he got it over with without running into any Scuttlers or any real trouble. He kicked the corresponding vent grate off when he got to the end and found himself overlooking another concrete dead end room. The only way out was a stairwell that led up and off to the right.

He hopped out onto the floor and abruptly realized that life seemed to have been saving up all the trouble he'd avoided in the vents just so that it could loose it on him now. Something sparked across the room, and fire lit up on the floor, which, he realized, was coated in something slick and smelly. Fuel. The fire licked towards him like a living thing. He let out a small shout, turned and ran up the stairs. The flames continued to follow him.

Blake ran down a short corridor, took a sharp left, ran a few more feet, then took another left and nearly ran into the arms of a Walker. Screaming again, reacting purely on instinct, he ducked beneath the Walker's long grasp and kept running down a long stretch of dark, concrete corridor that was fast becoming lit up. He heard a furious roar and the pounding of uneven, misshapen feet as the Walker gave chase after him.

Another turn, and suddenly he found an open door. Squeezing in between the edge of the door and the wall, his heart thundering in his chest, Blake pushed himself into the room he'd seen on the other side of the bulletproof glass, whirled around and yanked down on a lever beside the door. A moment later, he heard banging on it, saw dents appear in it. He backed away, his MP-5 raised. The banging intensified for a moment...then, suddenly, a loud, pained shrieking roar sounded as the fire reached the Walker.

There was a loud thud, then silence.

Blake breathed a heavy sigh of relief...then heard a squeal behind him. Spinning around, he spied a quartet of Scuttlers making their way towards them. Two of the chicken-legged ones, two of the ugly spider-like creatures. He aimed and fired, hosing the hideous things down with a liberal spray of gunfire, turning them into so much smoking, chewed up meat. Blake squeezed the trigger until the gun clicked empty, then kept clicking.

Finally, shaking, he released the trigger.

He was alone now. Still shaking from the adrenaline, Blake reloaded. If the men had come with him...one, if not _all_ , of them would be dead right now. Maybe even him, too. He began looking around the room he'd come to. There was the door that led to the burn chamber and the two Walkers. He could see all three of his men through the window, intact, alive, staring at him. He nodded to them, they nodded back.

He noticed a little number **3** over the door, and a **2** over the window looking into the burn chamber. He spied corresponding switches across the room. Of course, it had to be. He heaved a sigh, spying four switches in all. One of them must have opened the door that'd let the men in and the fourth one...he spotted a **4** over another door, right next to the one he'd entered through. He tried that door quickly, but found it locked firmly.

"Wonderful," he muttered.

He stared at the switchboard for a moment, then finally reached out and threw the number two switch. It went without trouble and immediately the room lit up. Blake turned around, spying jets of flame shooting from the nozzles overhead in the burn room. Both Walkers went up like dry leaves and began shrieking, racing around the confined space. Soon, they were dead, burning heaps on the wire-mesh floor. Blake flipped the switch back, then opened the inner door. He spied a fire extinguisher mounted on the wall, grabbed it and quickly put out the remaining fires in the burn room. He tried to ignore the awful stench.

When the fires were out, he opened up the outer door and called the men through. Soon, all four of them were on the other side.

"Well...that's that, at least," Dixon muttered.

"God that shit stinks," Falchek growled.

"Yeah, come on, let's press on. I want out of this place," Blake said.

He flipped the final switch, opening the only remaining door in the room. It led to another short corridor that ended in gleaming, silver elevator doors.

"Down, down, down," Dixon muttered unhappily.

"Yet further still downwards," Falchek replied.

"Come on, suck it up," Blake said, making for the elevator. "We've got more work to do."


	12. Chapter 12: Deeper Still

This time, when the elevator doors opened, it was noticeably hotter.

"This is the furnace room," Dixon said helpfully.

Blake found himself staring into a huge, murky room. A massive stack of crates dominated the center of it. He stepped out cautiously into the intense heat, and immediately saw where it was coming from. To his direct left was a massive furnace. It was basically a huge, rectangular hole in the wall with a wire-mesh grate covering it. A huge fire roared inside.

"Wait here," Blake said.

The men responded affirmatively and Blake began to make a slow circuit of the room, around the large amount of crates in the center. He began to see that they weren't so much of a pile as a perimeter. There was an area of empty space within them. On the opposite side of the room was another furnace, mirroring the other.

Blake made his way along the space in front of the second furnace. He spied a gap in the crates, a way into the center. He wanted to see if there was anything useful in there, something that might help him in his war against Gen Inc and their mad Colonel, Whitley. As he began to step into it, he heard a warning snuff from around the corner of the way yet gone. A second later, a hideous, misshapen Walker appeared, a thing of rough gray skin, huge, powerful arms and no eyes. Blake screamed and, with nowhere to go, backed in through the gap.

The Walker came in after him, forcing itself through the narrow gap and collapsing one of the heavy crates, blocking the way out. Blake cursed violently, thinking fast, looking around. He spied another narrow gap across the way, something he'd have to duck to get through. But what about the Walker? An idea popped into his head and he knew it was probably his only chance. Reaching into his pocket, Blake extracted one of the grenades he'd grabbed. He pulled the pin, dropped it at his feet, turned, ran and dove through the hole.

"Frag out!" he called.

He'd just begun scrambling to get out of the way when the grenade blew. Something heavy and painful slammed into his back, and several bits of debris rained down on him, but otherwise he was unharmed. Slowly, he got to his feet and surveyed the damage he'd caused. Luck had found him once more, and both furnaces remained intact and unbroken. Blake felt relief sweep through him. He could have easily seen flames shoot through the room. The crates, however, were all broken up and scattered in pieces across the room.

So was the Walker.

Blake felt fear shoot through him and he checked himself as the men came out of the elevator. After a long moment, he breathed a sigh of relief. He didn't seem to have gotten any on him. Neither did any of the men.

"What the hell happened?" Dixon asked.

"Walker," Blake replied simply. "Come on, let's go."

The only way out was a huge, garage-style door that was closed to the world. Blake found a switch and flipped it. The door ground open.

"Holy shit," Fisk muttered. "This place is huge."

"Yep," Dixon said. "There's a lot more to this place."

"How did they build all this without anyone noticing?" Blake whispered.

"This is freaking Antarctica, no one notices anything down here," Dixon replied. "If you've got the resources and the money, you can pretty much make anything happen fast."

"Yeah, I guess so..." Blake murmured.

They were standing on a catwalk that overlooked a large, warehouse-sized room. The floor below was littered with all manner of crates and boxes. At the back of the room, on the ground floor, was another huge furnace. On the impromptu second story, there were doors. Two of them, one on either side of the catwalk platform.

"I guess we should check those out," Blake said. He thought about which one to investigate first, and finally broke right.

The men followed him silently. They moved along the catwalk until they reached the door. It was open, and Blake could hear someone talking inside.

"Look, please, don't shoot me, okay?! I-I-I just-"

"Shut up and tell me where the others are! You and your fucking friends are going down. No trial, no judge, no jury, we do it straight-up fucking execution style down here!"

Not good. Blake quickly stepped into the room and saw one of the gasmask wearing soldiers bearing down on another engineer. Blake quickly hosed the soldier down with bullets, spraying his blood all over the wall in front of him. The room looked like a side storage area with a few desks, shelves and crates scattered about. As the soldier's corpse fell, Blake turned the rifle on the engineer, who froze.

"Whoa, man," he said.

"Who are you?" Blake asked.

"Lavelle," Dixon said. "What's going on? What was he talking about? Blake, this is a friend of mine, Tom Lavelle. He works down here, maintaining the furnaces."

"Uh, yeah. Please don't shoot me," Lavelle said.

He looked to be older than Dixon, his pale face clean-shaven, his hair brown hair thinning. He had a narrow face and a high, smooth forehead. His jumpsuit was torn and burned and bloodied in a few places. He looked like he'd been through hell.

"What was he talking about? You and your friends?" Blake asked.

"Uh...hell, I guess it doesn't matter now. Me and a bunch of the other guys, mainly a lot of medics and engineers, have been planning to overthrow this place for a few weeks now. We managed to piece together what they were doing, what they were planning...they're trying to get these things to the mainland! So we finally initiated our plan today. We staged a power failure, let a bunch of the creatures loose, tried to do as much damage as possible. The soldiers quickly figured it out...it's a war now. Anyone who isn't wearing a fucking gasmask, anyone not a member of Whitley's Elite Guard or whatever the hell he calls them, is to be terminated with extreme prejudice. I was at the airfields originally, but I ran down here to try and help the others..."

"What happened to them?" Blake asked.

"There were some medics that were supposed to meet up down here, but the gasmasks got to them. I think I'm the only one left...who are you? You obviously don't work here."

Blake spent a moment catch Lavelle up to speed, who began nodding. "This is great," he said. "We haven't really had much of a leader figure, someone who really understood what the hell was going on and could take charge. Special Forces...this is great. But, look, there was a reason I was coming here." Lavelle pointed to a shelf behind him.

"Can I?" he asked.

"Yeah, slowly," Blake replied, still uncertain of the man.

"Okay." He turned and walked over to the shelf, then grabbed a small metal footlocker off of it. He brought it over to a desk at the back of the room and opened it up, then motioned for the others to come and join him.

As soon as he looked inside the footlocker, Blake's spirits rose. Six test kits were secreted away inside, all lined up, neat and ready to go.

"Oh thank _god,_ " Falchek groaned.

"Yep...who goes first?" Lavelle asked.

"I'll go first," Blake replied.

Everyone took a collective step back as he grabbed the first kit and stuck it into his arm. He pulled the trigger, watched the blood fill the glass case, then pulled it out, held it up for them all to see. Ten seconds passed, and he set the kit down.

"There," he said. "I'm human. Your turn, Lavelle."

"Okay," the engineer replied.

He grabbed the next kit and brought it up to his arm. Blake focused on Lavelle, keeping his flamethrower trained on the engineer. Tension filled the room immediately. Lavelle stuck the needle into his flesh, pulled the trigger, extracted the needle again. He held it up to the light and they watched the chemicals mix with the blood.

There was no reaction.

"Whew," Lavelle said, laughing. "Glad we got that-"

Someone screamed.

Blake snapped around and saw that Fisk had stuck something into Dixon's back. Only, he realized with horror, not something, but his own arm. It had grown into something long and pointed and bony. It suddenly punched through Dixon's ribcage in a spray of blood. The man continued to scream with complete, agonized abandon. Fisk's face had gone complete blank and he was vibrating. He raised his shotgun single-handedly and aimed at Falchek, who yelled and dove out of the way. Lavelle didn't have a weapon.

Blake took a few steps forward and squeezed the trigger of his flamethrower right as the Fisk-Thing opened fire with its shotgun, missing Falchek by mere inches. Both the Fisk-Thing and poor Dixon went up in flames, both inhuman and human voices shrieking in agony, mixing together in a nightmarish chorus.

They collapsed to the concrete floor in a heap and burned in silence for several minutes. The men simply sat there and watched, stunned.

Finally, Falchek said, "I guess it's my turn."

"Uh...yeah, yeah," Lavelle replied.

Blake silently turned the flamethrower on Falchek, who stared it the black muzzle for a second, then accepted the test kit. He stuck it in his arm, pulled the trigger, studied the glass vial. Nothing happened. The men let out a collective sigh of relief.

"Thank god we got that over with," Blake muttered.

Lavelle nodded gravely, then slowly walked over to the corpse of the soldier Blake had produced when he first entered the room, knelt and grabbed his gun, an MP-5, and some ammo. Blake took a moment to reload his flamethrower.

"So...now what?" Falchek muttered.

"We seem to be saying that a lot just lately, don't we?" Blake replied.

"There's an office across the catwalk, on this story. That's where the medics were supposed to be meeting us. I never made it. Got spotted, ran in here," Lavelle replied.

"Well...let's get it to it, then," Blake said.

They checked the room over once more, just to be sure, found nothing and left the smoking remains of Fisk and Dixon. Blake regretted their loss, Dixon's more, because he had been real, smart and level-headed, but he knew there was nothing that could be done about it. No amount of regret or guilt or depression could bring either man back. So Blake just did as he always did when the going got tough: he pressed on.

They found the office. It was a mess.

Blake opened the door and stepped inside. At first, it seemed like there was no one left alive. A large, oak table dominated the center of the room. There was a computer at the end of it, facing away from them. A few more filing cabinets and desks lined the peripheral of the room. Nearly half a dozen bodies, all of them in white (and red) jumpsuits, lay scattered across the room. Two were on the table, the rest were on the floor, one leaned up against the far wall.

"Jesus," Lavelle whispered.

Blake took a step into the room, then stopped. He thought he'd seen one of them move. The one against the wall. He raised his flamethrower, then began advancing on the body. It shifted again. The eyes opened, blinked several times, then focused on Blake.

"Who are you?" the man asked weakly.

"My name is Blake, I'm with Special Forces. This is Falchek and Lavelle...you look pretty beat up. What happened?" Blake replied.

"Ugh...Whitley and his asshole Black Ops squad. They found us, started shooting us...thought I was dead. I was one of the first down, got clipped in the stomach. Before they could notice I was still alive, Whitley started coughing, started puking, the men got him out of there fast, left me to die, I guess...I patched myself up, tried to fix the others, but they were all dead. I passed out...My name's Temple."

Slowly, he stood up, wincing. "Bullet went through, nothing got clipped," he added, reaching down and touching the right side of his stomach where a bloody patch was.

"Well, Temple, I guess you got lucky," Blake said. "Welcome to the resistance."

"Heh, welcome to it, I practically started it. I'm a researcher," he said. "Lavelle...your name was on the list of friendlies, and Falchek...we were close to trying to recruit you."

"I probably would've turned you down if I knew this was going to happen," Falchek replied, looking around the ruined office.

"Yeah well, we're all onboard with the idea," Blake said. "But right now, we need to test you. We literally just did a test in the other room...but I'll test myself, and then vouch for them, to keep everything kosher. Does that sound good?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

They used up another two test kits proving that Blake and Temple were both human. That just left them with the one, which was fine by Blake. He put it in his pocket, careful of the needle, and saw that Temple had produced a pistol from somewhere.

"So, what's downstairs?" Blake asked after they'd checked out the office and found nothing more of use beyond a few magazines for Temple's pistol.

"Two little rooms and the way out. 'Out' being deeper in, really. There's a big tunnel we'll want to get to, with a cargo elevator that goes straight to the surface, right next to the airfield. That's our goal, I imagine," Temple replied.

"Fantastic, let's move out!"

Blake led the way out of the office. As soon as he stepped out onto the catwalk, however, he spied movement down below. A lot of it.

"Hostiles!" he screamed, taking aim with his MP-5 and sighting up the nearest gasmask wearing trooper, who was already in the process of climbing the stairs up to them. He let the bastard have it with a spray of gunfire. The trooper's head snapped to the side so hard the gasmask was dislodged and flew through the air, accompanied by a spray of blood and brains. Suddenly, the storage room exploded in a barrage of gunfire.

Temple, Falchek and Lavelle joined him at the catwalk, using the waist-high wall as a barrier, ducking down behind it, resting their barrels atop it to aim. Blake counted a dozen gasmask wearing enemies down below, all of them scrambling for cover among the large wooden crates. He sighted one of them still in the open and downed him with another spray of machine gun fire that took him in the gut. Temple managed to kill a second and Falchek put down another two before the rest of them scrambled for cover.

The chaos became a little more refined as the men shot at each other from behind cover. Blake knew they needed to keep the upper hand, to push the advantage of high ground. He suddenly ducked down entirely.

"Cover me," he snapped. "I'm flanking them."

"Got it," Falchek, the nearest, replied.

Blake hurriedly crawled across the floor, completely hidden from sight. He made his way towards where the stairs admitted access to the second story, hit the corner and crossed around to where the original garage door they'd entered through was. He moved about three quarters of the way down the catwalk's length, then got back into position. He popped up and took careful aim. Now he had a clear view of the majority of the renegade soldiers. He opened fire, murdering two of them before they had any idea what was happening.

With the advantage of two angles, it didn't take long for Blake and his band of survivors to take down the remainder of the hostiles. A full minute of silence passed after the last shot was fired, and finally Blake stood up.

"Okay," he called. "Let's get down there and see what we can see."

Temple and Falchek remained at the top while Blake and Lavelle made their way down the stairs. They spent five minutes searching the primary room, making sure all the soldiers were really dead, then carefully patted them down.

"What if some of them are infected?" Temple asked, after joining them.

"Well..." Blake considered it. Some of them _had_ to be infected. "I dunno, I guess it isn't our problem, honestly. We don't have time to stop and deal with literally every spill of blood, every body part, every corpse we find," he surmised.

"Yeah, I guess that makes sense," Temple replied.

Over the course of the battle, Blake had gone through two full magazines of ammo, but he managed to grab three replacements after splitting the spoils of war with the other three men. They decided to check out the pair of rooms before moving on. The first one was a mostly empty storage room that held nothing of interest. The second one, however, was a break room, and it was here that Falchek suddenly sat down.

"You okay?" Blake asked.

"I...yeah, I guess I just...man, Fisk," he muttered.

"Fisk?" Temple asked.

"One of the survivors who burst out, just before we met you," Blake explained.

"Oh...yeah, it's crazy how that can just...happen," Temple muttered, shuddering.

"It wasn't that...I mean, okay, yeah, that was horrible and I'll probably have nightmares about it for the rest of my life...both days of it. But, I mean, I've never actually been around someone who was infected before. I mean, I probably was, but I hadn't _worried_ about it. I really thought they had it under control. I was so sure that I'd be able to spot some inconsistency, some abnormality, _something_ to indicate who was human and was...one of those _things._ But, I mean, there was nothing! _Nothing!_ I spent two whole hours with that guy and he seemed totally human. I actually, seriously thought that he wasn't infected. If anything I suspected Dixon was, because he was acting a little funny, too cool, too calm, but it was the reverse! Dixon. Was. Human."

Falchek shuddered and looked like he might start crying.

"Okay, okay...maybe we should take a break," Blake said.

"What? Are you nuts, we need to get moving," Temple said.

"Listen, I don't know how long you guys have been on the move, but I've been at it for like twelve hours now. I'm starving. I need a drink. I've gotta take a leak. I want to rest for five minutes because by back is killing me. And we've all been through a lot, and here we are, in a break room with a little bathroom attached to it. When are we going to get another opportunity like this? We take a quick break, watch the door, grab a bite to eat," Blake said.

Falchek didn't put up any argument, neither did Lavelle, and Temple finally relented. There wasn't much in the break room, just a few chairs, a table, a microwave, a mini-fridge and a few cabinets. Blake ignored some of the items in the fridge that weren't in sealed packages, unwilling to trust leftovers anymore. They took out everything they could find: half a dozen bottles of water, three cans of Coke, a couple of cans of beans, a can of corn, a sealed PB&J sandwich, a pair of frozen microwaveable burritos and a single frozen TV dinner with a slice of what might have been beef, a side of corn and some mashed potatoes and gravy.

Blake grabbed a bottle of water, a Coke, a can of beans and the PB&J. Although it wasn't much and he wasn't partial to beans, nor had he eaten a PB&J sandwich in fifteen years, it tasted like a freaking feast. He made himself eat and drink slow, his stomach was twisted into knots from stress enough as it was. The men all ate in silence, subtly keeping their distance from each other. Blake thought that interesting. They'd proven that they were all human, and yet there was still that modicum of mistrust between them.

He wondered if he'd ever be able to fully trust another human being again.

Falchek had a point, Blake thought as he ate. How could one of these things so perfectly imitate a man? Although he was telling himself not to make any assumptions, not to trust _anyone_ , his thoughts were basically in line with what Falchek had been saying. He'd been kind of leaning towards Dixon to be the imitator, not Fisk. Fisk was mistrustful and quiet and watched them all through steely eyes that revealed nothing. Dixon, on the other hand, was too level-headed, too calm about all the horror around them, too casual.

But he was human.

It was just his personality, who he was.

And Fisk had been infected.

Blake decided to put that train of thought off for the moment. He finished his meal, drained the bottle of water and stepped into the tiny bathroom that was just a sink and a toilet. He pushed the door almost closed, unwilling to close it entirely, and relieved himself. When he stepped back out, Falchek took his turn, and Blake moved to the exit. He looked out into the box-stuffed, corpse-strewn room and saw that nothing had changed.

His goal remained unchanged.

Find and kill ex-Colonel Whitley.

Stop the infection from spreading and consuming the whole of mankind.

Yep, all in a day's work.


	13. Chapter 13: Heart of Darkness

The way out turned out to be simply going down even further into the twisted metal and concrete labyrinth that Whitley and his co-conspirators at Gen Inc had constructed beneath the ice. Blake stepped out onto a metal platform that was set high into a tall room. He walked to the edge and glanced down, spying the floor a few stories below. A stairwell, wrapped around the room, descended into the dimly-lit area below.

"Fantastic," Blake muttered.

He was feeling a lot better now that he had eaten, taken a piss and sat down for a few minutes. The men seemed less jittery, less nervous about whatever may lay ahead. It was amazing what a simple break could do to rejuvenate a man. Unfortunately, now that he could think clearer, another dark thought had returned to roost in Blake's psyche. According to that report, he had the virus inside of him now, at least in a very small degree.

But was that a bad thing?

There was no way of knowing, but what if what the report said was true? An immunity. If he could be immunized against the entity, then wasn't that a good thing? Sure, they could still rip his head off or impale him or something, but he would die a _human being_. And that was worth a lot, at least in his book. But this alien lifeform was so different, so...other, that it could just as easily go in some other, horrible direction.

Blake shook his head slightly and set off down the steps. Maybe he could beat some answers out of Whitley, though he doubted it. It seemed as if the man had infected himself, which meant he couldn't trust anything his former commanding officer said. No, if he wanted any information on this, he'd have to find out for himself.

But how?

The answer obviously wasn't forthcoming. Blake led the men down to the ground floor of the transitional room and did a quick survey of the area. There was nothing worth grabbing and only one door. It being the only way to go, Blake opened it up. He stepped out into an immense, dark tunnel, the roof of which was lost to the shadows overhead. It stretched away from him in either direction. There was nothing he could see to the left, all of it cast in darkness, but there was a fire burning to the far right, so he could at least see that.

"Come on," he whispered. "We've got to get some lights on or something, no way I'm fighting in the damned dark."

The men quietly agreed with him and they set off towards the right. The tunnel was a great mystery around him. Blake wanted to turn on his flashlight, but he didn't want to give away his position. He was sure he'd done that enough when he'd opened that door and come into the tunnel. And, what was worse, he was convinced that they weren't alone, though he wasn't sure if the threat was human or alien.

It quickly became clear what had caused the fire as they approached a dead end. A semi truck, the side of which was stamped with the Gen Inc. biohazard logo, was buried beneath a ton of debris. Part of the tunnel had collapsed, effectively blocking off any escape route it might have offered. The fire cast an ominous, flickering glow on this portion of the tunnel, lighting up the men's faces, making them seem grimmer, more desperate than before. Something spat out a stream of blue-white sparks from nearby, something mounted on a wall.

"Fusebox," Blake said as he got closer to it.

"Let me take a look," Lavelle replied. He approached the fusebox and Blake stepped back. After a few seconds, he grinned. "Hey, it's labeled 'Tunnel Lights'. I think I can fix this, give me a moment and maybe we'll be able to see what the hell we're doing."

Blake waited impatiently, hating the sea of darkness that surrounded their little pool of light. He could hear sounds in the darkness that seemed to echo endlessly. Things moving, what might have been a grunt, perhaps a low growl. What shared this space beneath the earth with them? Blake was suddenly reminded of a book he'd once read, a book by H. P. Lovecraft: _At the Mountains of Madness_. It was disturbingly similar to what he was experiencing now. The tale was of a group of scientists and explorers finding an ancient, alien city down at the bottom of the Earth, in Antarctica, and running from a host of alien horrors.

"Got it!" Lavelle said suddenly.

There was a sharp surge, a loud humming noise, and the lights burst into existence. Blake let out a sigh of relief. The lights were powerful, and threw everything in a sharp focus. He walked along the length of the semi truck trailer, intent on making his way back in the opposite direction and see what they were facing, when, suddenly the whole trailer shifted. He froze and took a step back, raising his MP-5.

Something was in the trailer.

"Everyone get back," he said. "Everyone get-"

The back doors burst open and a hulking creature leaped out, landing with a heavy thud on the floor of the tunnel. It loose a furious roar, raising two misshapen, bulky arms. It had to be at least eight or nine feet tall, most of its skin a mottled greenish-gray color. One arm ended in a huge, fleshy club, the other a powerful pincer.

Before anyone could do anything, it reached out, grabbed Falchek in its pincer, picked him up off the floor and squeezed. Falchek began screaming as it kept squeezing him, clearly intent on cutting him in half. Blood began to seep out of his midsection as it piled on the pressure, oozing over its malformed armed. Something snapped inside and Falchek screamed louder, a spray of blood escaping his mouth. Without hesitating, Blake took aim and fired, putting a round through Falchek's forehead and killing him instantly, sparing him the pain.

He screamed for the others to back up as he quickly switched to his flamethrower and kept his finger on the trigger for six entire seconds, backing up, roasting the beast and Falchek's corpse, coating it in layer after layer of burning fuel. The creature roared and ran and stumbled, crashing into things, while the men backed up. Eventually, it collapsed in a burning heap, Falchek's blackened corpse still clutched in its pincer.

"Jesus...Falchek," Blake whispered, staring in mute horror at the corpses.

After a long moment, Temple approached Blake, put his hand on his shoulder. "Come on, we really can't linger," he said softly.

"Yeah...I...yeah," Blake muttered.

He deliberately turned away from the two bodies. All he could see was the dark, bloody hole suddenly appearing in Falchek's forehead. His own bullet, a man, an ally, dead by his own hand. But it was a mercy killing.

Blake had never mercy killed anyone before.

But it was the right thing to do. He kept telling himself that as he slowly trudged back through the tunnel, the way they had come from originally. It was the right thing to do. He was already dead, already infected, his body just didn't know it yet. No sense in letting the man suffer unnecessarily. It was the right thing to do.

"Hey, there's the elevator," Temple said suddenly.

Blake stopped moving. He realized he'd made it back to the original point of entry for them. To his left was the door he'd led them through. Directly across from it, tucked away in a square niche in the wall, were the silvery double doors of the elevator that would grant them access to the surface. In the darkness, they had missed it. Temple was already making his way over to it, while Lavelle hovered uncertainly nearby, no doubt feeling bad for Blake.

Blake shook his head, blinked his eyes, took a deep breath and let it out. He had to focus, had to stay sharp, or _he_ was next on the chopping block. He was deep in enemy territory and death might be around every single corner. He couldn't let his emotions get in the way. For now, they needed to be locked up somewhere deep and safe and faraway. There'd be time for therapy later...maybe. If he was lucky enough to last that long.

It took an effort, but Blake regained control of himself.

"Let's head up," he said, joining Temple, who cursed softly. "What's wrong?"

"It's...dead, or locked down, or something," Temple replied. "It won't open!"

"Lavelle?" Blake asked.

The engineer joined them in the niche and took a moment to study the elevator. Finally, he sighed and turned to face them. "It doesn't have any power. And the junction box that controls it is deeper in, the opposite direction of where we were going, thankfully, so we can still get to it. Get me to that box and I can restore power."

"All right," Blake replied.

Now that they could see more of the tunnel, Blake realized how crammed full of crap it was. There were crates and boxes everywhere, some of them piled up higher than he was tall. Something was moving among the crates, a misshapen minotaur for a labyrinth of wood and metal. Blake had his flamethrower ready. It didn't sound human. He had Temple and Lavelle stay far enough back that they wouldn't get in each others way in case they needed to move fast. It wasn't exactly a maze in between the stacks of crate, but it was close enough for discomfort.

Blake made his way down the central aisle, checking any side passages or alcoves. The first one he passed was empty, then the second, and the third-

A Walker let out a shriek of triumphant discovery upon seeing him and immediately ran towards him. It was smaller, more human-sized, wearing the remains of a gasmask and black camouflage. Blake backed up hurriedly, shouting for the others to do the same, and let the thing have it. He hosed it down with flaming fuel and the beast shrieked furiously, losing track of him, bumping into crates and knocking them over.

Before long, it fell to the floor, a silently burning heap.

They made their way through the crate maze to the end, where their progress was once more checked by a huge, garage-style industrial door. Blake stared up at it, wondering what could possibly lay on the other side.

"You two, over there," he said, pointing to the far left. "Stay out of sight, back me up," he said.

Both men responded positively and got into position. Blake threw the switch and the door began grinding open. It revealed another large, warehouse like room, though this one was perhaps a third the size of the area they'd had the shootout in upstairs. The middle of it was entirely open and clear of both box and debris, though, along the walls, Blake spied several piles of crates. It was obvious that this was some kind of shifting area. There were several tracks built into the ceiling, with chained hooks hanging in a few areas.

There didn't seem to be anything immediately dangerous in the area, so Blake called the others out. He spied two more huge doors across the room, opposite their current position, both of them closed firmly against the world. The only real thing of note was a second-story control room with a narrow stairwell leading up to it.

"Check the area," Blake instructed the men. "See what you can find, then we'll see about getting those doors open."

"We only need the left door open," Lavelle informed him. "That's where the junction box is."

They split up, keeping an eye on each other as they did so. The next several minutes went by quickly as the men searched the area. There didn't seem to be much of anything useful. Blake found a pistol stashed in the control room with a few magazines of ammo. He tucked the pistol into the holster that he'd nearly forgotten about after making sure it was loaded, then pocketed the two spare magazines. He headed back for the ground floor.

"We've got a problem," Lavelle said.

"What?" Blake replied.

Lavelle pointed at the door he'd previously indicated. "That door is locked, electronically. The override switch is in the other room, next to it."

"Okay, so we go into the other room."

"That's what I thought, but when I went to open _that_ door, I heard...something."

Blake paused. "Like what?"

"Something was growling inside. It sounded _big._ "

Blake considered it. There really wasn't an option. They _needed_ to get the hell out of here and it was looking like that elevator to the surface was their only ticket. He heard footfalls and turned. Temple was coming towards him, holding something.

"What'd you find?" he asked.

"Grenades, a small stash of them," Temple replied. "Incendiary grenades."

Blake took them and looked them over. Three in all. They looked to be in good condition. He gave one back to Lavelle, one to Temple, who looked at it carefully for a moment, then passed it back. "You'll do better with it than I will," he confided.

Blake laughed. "Okay, fair point." He took it back and pocketed it. "Now-"

A loud roar tore through the air, and all three men spun around, facing the direction the roar had come from: the door they were supposed to open. Blake brought his MP-5 back into play, taking an involuntary step back.

"Uh..." Lavelle murmured. "Maybe-maybe..."

A huge dent appeared in the door.

"Oh, fuck me," Temple whispered.

"Get ready," Blake said.

There was no chance to get ready. A club of meaty flesh punched through the center of the large door. It divided suddenly and began forcing the hole it had created open wider, the metal crunching, turning into an accordion. Something began to be birthed from the metal womb, something horrible and twisted and in no way human. It was so big it had to duck to get through the twelve foot door. Blake felt sheer, mindless, screaming terror boil through him as this fifteen foot monstrosity forced its way into the room.

Temple was screaming something and Lavelle was opening fire, the reports from the machine gun sounding somehow distant and faraway to Blake, as if coming to him from underwater. He looked down at his own MP-5, then back up at the creature. It had two mammoth tree-trunk legs of gray, mottled flesh, a thin 'stomach' that was little more than a collection of thick tendons, somehow supporting the immense chest that looked swollen and misshapen like a bizarre turnip. There was no head, but out of each arm grew something horrid. Out of the left arm grew a massive mouth ringed with teeth, out of the right was a misshapen human torso.

It was a visage of mindless, yammering terror.

Blake opened fire, screaming something incoherent as he did so, backing away from it. The creature roared and stumbled towards them.

"Shoot your weapon!" Blake screamed at Temple, who was just standing there, staring up at it. "Fire your weapon, Temple!"

But Temple wouldn't, or couldn't. He stared up into the twisted face of inhuman madness and screamed his sanity away. Blake emptied his MP-5, spraying every single one of the bullets into the broad, meaty torso of the thing to no apparent effect. He was reloading, screaming for Temple, but it was too late.

The arm with nothing but a mouth at the end abruptly snapped down, Temple disappearing into the yawning maw up to his torso, and the jaws snapped shut. He didn't even have time to scream. There was a spray of blood. The legs took a few, stumbling steps and then toppled over. Blake heard something very familiar before he opened fire again, the sound of a grenade. He realized that Lavelle had thrown his single flame grenade.

It burst in a brilliant orange-red spray. The creature's lower portion was coated in burning, flickering flames and it shrieked and stumbled. Blake knew they had to push the advantage. He emptied another magazine into the burning beast, then reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the flame grenades. He pulled the pin, counted off two seconds, then hurled it up, towards the top half of the creature. The grenade burst while still in air, spraying the rest of the malformed titan, and he fell back, hastily reloading.

He emptied another two magazines into the thing before it finally collapsed. For the sake of safety, he spent up an entire canister of fuel burning the remains. When that was over, he led a silent, shaken Lavelle past Temple's remains and into the room the creature had burst out of it. There were broken crates everywhere, crushed supplies and lots of dead bodies. They found the lockdown switch at the back of the room, threw it and left the room as quick as they could. Working fast, wanting to be free of the underground that was slowly filling up with death, the pair of men opened the final door in the area. It was mostly empty.

"There it is," Lavelle muttered unhappily, pointing to a large junction box on the far wall. He walked past a large wooden crate in the center of the room and set to work. Blake followed him for a little bit, then trailed to a stop.

He felt like he was in shock, dislocated from the world. Two men dead...just like that. Gone. Poof. Like magic. One minute they were walking, talking, thinking...the next they were an object. They were...Blake frowned, hearing something, something horribly familiar. It was nearby, very close. He looked around hurriedly and his eyes fell on the big wooden crate next to him. It was broken on the side, there was a hole and he crouched.

The sound...it was ticking, like a clock.

For a second, he wasn't sure what he was seeing. It was almost like he had gone blind or maybe he was having a stroke or something.

Numbers. There were numbers.

First he saw **45**. But then the five slid up and was replaced by a **4**. Then a **3**.

"Okay, all done!" Lavelle said, sounding oddly cheerful. He was walking towards Blake. "We can get going and-"

" _Bomb!_ " Blake screamed. " _Bomb!_ _Run!_ "

Then he was off and running. Lavelle began to say something, then started running as well. They bolted through the open storage area, back into the tunnel, past the bodies, the crates, and then they were at the elevator. It was opening. There was no one and nothing inside. It was clean. It was beautiful. They slammed into the elevator and Blake smashed the up button. The doors snapped close and the lift shot up.

"Do you think we'll make it?" Lavelle whispered.

Blake opened his mouth, but nothing was coming out.

Beneath them, they heard a tremendous explosion. The elevator began to vibrate, subtly at first, then more violently, trembling until Blake thought it would be shaken right off of its tracks and they would plummet to their death.

Then the trembling subsided.

The elevator came to a halt and the doors opened. Snow began blowing in. Bleak, antarctic wastelands awaited them.

Blake didn't think feeling the freezing winds blowing across his face would be something he'd miss, but, well, here it was.

Up ahead, he spied the dark, angular shadow of a building.

"Come on," he said, and set off.

Lavelle followed silently.


	14. Chapter 14: Hostile Territory

"Wait...wait, I need a minute," Lavelle said.

Blake hesitated. They had made it to the building, following a string of bright blue light poles, burning through the falling snow. The storm was just as bad as ever, the winds shrieking, the snow turning the men nearly blind. The building they'd come to seemed huge, another warehouse-sized structure.

The immediate area around him was a long, narrow strip of space in between the front wall of the structure and a collection of partial walls that were only about eight or nine feet tall. The ceiling was much higher overhead, perhaps twenty five feet high. Most of the narrow space was taken up by large blue shipping containers, stamped with the Gen Inc. logo. They had came into the building through a large, open sliding door.

It was unguarded.

"Okay," Blake said finally. "We'll take a short break."

While Lavelle leaned up against one of the shipping containers, Blake took a moment to check out the immediate area. The only thing of interest he found was a door near the far left corner that led deeper into the warehouse. It was closed, and he left it that way for the moment. He retreated back to where Lavelle stood. The man now had a cigarette and was puffing away at it nervously. Blake walked past him, a little deeper into the area, in between two shipping crates, to get away from the cold. Lavelle joined him.

"You wanna smoke?" Lavelle asked. "I still got most of a pack."

Blake shook his head. "No, no cigarettes for me. I just drink and smoke the occasional joint," he replied.

Lavelle nodded. "Smart, real smart..." He hesitated, stopped puffing away for a moment, stared at Blake. "I guess neither of us are infected, huh?" he asked.

"What makes you say that?" Blake replied.

"Well, we're alone, it's the perfect opportunity," Lavelle replied.

Blake pointed to his flamethrower. "I got this."

"Yeah...I guess that's a good point. I mean, I guess we don't have to worry anyway. We've both seen each other tested. I saw _you_ tested twice." He started smoking again.

"So, this resistance, how many?" Blake asked.

Lavelle shrugged. "Dunno, at least thirty, though I don't know how many are actually still alive. I could be the last one left."

"How'd it get started? I mean...you guys just decided to rebel?"

"Well, no, not quite like that. It was...I guess it was this damned place. We're living on a patch of ice for Christ's sake. The wind never stops, it's always dark down here, it snows almost all the time..." He shook his head. "We were all going nuts, I think. And when we really figured out what we had on our hands down here, that was it. The big shit. It lit the fuse, set us off. You'd be surprised how many just straight-up said 'yes' when we asked." He shook his head, took another long pull off the cigarette, then dropped it and quashed it beneath his foot.

"Okay...I'm ready," he said.

"You sure? You're not going to freak out?" Blake asked. Lavelle looked at him. "No, I'm not being a jerk. I mean, I'm not trying to be. I'm actually flat-out asking you. After everything that happened...if we're going to survive, we need to be clear, concise and sharp. I really need to know if you're going to be okay."

Lavelle looked at him for a moment, then nodded slowly. "Yeah...I mean, I feel okay. I...obviously, I never put up with anything like this, but my life hasn't exactly been the easiest life. I'm no stranger to stress. But I'll let you know if I think I'm losing it or something."

Blake nodded. "Okay. Good. It's good to have someone to watch your back. Come on, let's see what we can see."

They made their way down to the door and Blake opened it. They came to a divider room. There was nothing in it save for a corpse leaning up against a wall, its brains splattered all across the wall behind it. Just one door. Blake went through it first as well. He saw a gasmask wearing soldier making his way across the room towards him. The man held an MP-5. Blake snapped his own piece up and hosed the man down with a dozen bullets. He screamed as bloody holes opened up all over his body and he was thrown off his feet.

"Damn, Blake," Lavelle muttered.

"Yeah, well, he had it coming," Blake replied.

He crossed the room after making sure no one else was coming, knelt and carefully patted the man down. He retrieved only a single magazine for his MP-5 and then straightened back up. This time, he had two doors to choose from in an L-shaped room. One door, to the left, led to an even smaller room, no larger than a closet. It had a window built into it, and through that window Blake saw a table with a test kit on it.

He tried to open the door, but it was locked.

He sighed. "Goddamnit, I want in there," Blake muttered.

"Let me look," Lavelle said.

He wasted a few minutes trying to find a way in, but the door was locked firmly. Heaving a sigh, he shrugged. Blake turned and made his way to the other door. It opened easily enough. This time, they came into a larger room with several niches and little alcoves along its peripheral. Blake had time to see a couple of doors, one them an elevator door, and a pair of gasmask-wearing soldiers in the center of the room, facing away from him.

They were just turning around when Blake and Lavelle mowed them down. They waited to see if anyone else would show up, but no one did.

"Man, they do _not_ have their shit together," Blake muttered.

"This operation has always been a little shoddy," Lavelle said. "Whitley and the other execs liked to act like they had this all under control, like it was just one big machine and they were riding high on perfection, but shit got fucked up all the time. People went missing, orders went unanswered, stuff broke down all the time."

"Great. The greatest threat to humanity in its short history and the three goddamned stooges are handling it," Blake muttered.

They did a quick search of the room that didn't turn up much. One of the doors was also locked firmly, the elevator doors were closed and the two magazines of ammo they found on the soldiers were given to Lavelle. What was _really_ creepy however was a stack of three clear crates that looked like blocks of ice. Inside of each block was a Scuttler, frozen, no doubt being prepared for shipment somewhere else.

"God," Lavelle muttered, staring at them. "Ugly things."

"Hideous," Blake agreed.

They opened the final door and stepped through into another corridor. At the end of it, Blake saw someone just disappearing from out of sight. He heard someone shouting not to shoot. The scene was hauntingly familiar. He imagined it was more so for Lavelle, who Blake had rescued from his exact situation less than an hour ago. The pair of them raced down the corridor. Blake whipped out his pistol as he rounded the corner, finding himself in another short corridor with an open door at the end. He saw two men standing just inside that room.

Racing forward, he put the gun to the back of the head of the nearest man, who was menacing a cowering engineer across the room, and pulled the trigger. Before the second man could say or do anything, Blake shifted his aim and fired again. The gasmask flew off the soldier's face as he crashed to the floor in a spray of blood and brains. Blake waited that crucial few seconds, still keyed up on adrenaline, ready for anything, but nothing happened. The engineer at the back of the room slowly lowered his hands.

"I-I-thank you," he said.

"And I welcome you," Blake replied.

Lavelle snorted, then laughed. After a moment, the other engineer laughed nervously. He took a deep, shuddering breath.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Name's Blake, Special Forces. This is Lavelle. We're with the resistance. Who are you?"

"The resistance? Oh, thank _god._ I thought I was the last one. My name is Powell."

Blake studied the man. He seemed very young, perhaps twenty four. His face was clean-shaven, his black hair cut very short. He was skinny and looked high-strung. He had no weapons on him, and he clenched his fists open and closed several times.

"Okay, first order of business," Blake said, pulling out his last, remaining test kit. "You know what to do with this, I assume?" he asked.

"Uh...yeah, but what about you?" he asked nervously, accepting the kit.

"It's my last one, but I saw another farther back in the facility, behind a locked door," Blake replied, taking a step back and raising his flamethrower.

Powell looked at it, then carefully raised the test kit. "I have a skeleton key," he said slowly. "I could get you in there."

"Good. Now, do the test."

Powell did the test. Nothing happened. Blake let out a sigh of relief, lowering the flamethrower. He considered Powell for a moment.

"If I give you a pistol, will you make me regret it?" he asked.

"No, I wouldn't. I know you can't kill these things with bullets alone," Powell replied.

Blake nodded and passed the pistol he'd picked up earlier and all the ammo for it over to Powell, who took it and pocketed the ammo.

"Okay, you're with the resistance, I assume you know the score?" he asked as moved deeper into the room, looking everything over. There was a door at the back.

"Yeah, stop the creatures from getting off this continent," Powell replied.

"Good. What's in this room?"

"Dunno. I was kind of chased here," Powell replied.

Blake sighed and opened the door. Nothing inside but more frozen blocks containing Scuttlers. Blake shook his head and closed it. He turned to regard the two engineers standing apart from each other, apart from him.

"Well...nothing else to do but keep pushing," he said, if only because it seemed like they expected him to say something.

They began making their way back through the building. "How'd you get mixed up in all this?" Blake asked.

"Me?" Powell asked. He shrugged and laughed nervously. "I was a boy genius," he replied. "Graduated high school at sixteen, master's degree in engineering at twenty. I've always felt...dislocated, from society. Alone. And I've always felt driven, you know? I'm twenty two now. I signed on with Gen Inc right out of college. They offered me this job, to help maintain their computers and setup databases down here at the bottom of the world. So I took it. I figured, why not? I'm already cut off from society, might as well make it official."

"Man, did you get more than you bargained for," Lavelle muttered.

"Yeah, did I ever," Powell replied unhappily.

They found the second of the locked doors and opened it up. There was nothing worth salvaging in the room and Blake felt his frustration begin to mount. When they traced their way back to the second door and unlocked it, Blake felt his frustration continue to rise. The only thing worth anything was the test kit he'd initially seen. He grabbed it and tested himself as quickly as he could, wanting to get on with this. Powell and Lavelle relaxed visibly when the test turned up negative.

"I vouch for Lavelle," Blake said, tossing away the kit. "I was there when he was last tested and he hasn't been out of my sight since."

"Good enough for me," Powell said.

"Great...now what. Both of those locked doors led to dead-ends. How do we get out of here? Or have I seen all there is to see of this building?" Blake asked.

"Oh, no. There's a door we passed coming back up here, it leads deeper in," Powell replied. "Come on, I'll show you."

They made their way slowly through the facility, occasionally hearing a distant gunshot or scream. Blake hoped the asshole guys in gasmasks were really getting creamed by the monsters they had helped breed. Powell brought them to the door and opened it up, stepping back to let Blake go first, since he had the gun and he knew what he was doing. Blake kept his MP-5 tucked up against his shoulder, finger on the trigger, trying to prepare himself to fight whatever might be waiting for them. The door opened into a long, white-tiled corridor.

There was nothing in it waiting for them except for a pair of doors: one at the very end, one to the right of that end door.

Blake, Lavelle and Powell came to stand there, in front of both doors, and remained still. Blake considered either door for a long moment. He felt like he was playing Russian roulette. What was behind Door Number One? Door Number Two? Blake realized he was drifting, losing focus, getting worried over nothing. Well, not nothing, but he faced down life or death situations often, significantly more so than the average person. So why was he hesitating now? He supposed it was because this situation was so much deadlier, so much more different. He was facing shape-shifting aliens in the freezing cold where any man could be a Thing...

He turned right, flipped the switch and opened the door. It led to a darkened corridor that extended for a good twenty feet, then veered sharply left. There was nothing in the corridor. It felt lonely and cold and isolated. Blake shivered slightly and pressed down it, keeping his gun tight and steady. He reached the corner, paused, then stepped out, revealing as little of his body as he could, in case someone or something was waiting. But there was nothing. Nothing alive at least. He spied a couple of crates with a scattering of something atop them, what might have been magazines or grenades, and set off towards them.

That's when he noticed the windows set into the left wall. They gave a view into the room the other door had led to. It was very well-lit, what appeared to be a cold, sterile environment. He spied a few dollies, some tables, crates.

And a trio of soldiers.

"Shoot!" Blake yelled, aiming and firing.

There was shattering glass, screaming, gunfire. He put half a dozen rounds into the nearest man's chest, then two more into his neck and one in his head. Powell and Lavelle opened fire as well, managing to kill the other two with Blake's help. As the final corpse hit the floor, Blake waited, seeing if anyone else would come out of hiding. There was a big support pillar in the center of the room that was blocking off his view of most of the room, but no one came out from behind it. Blake did, however, hear some nearby growls.

"Where's that coming from?" Powell asked, his voice breaking slightly.

"There," Blake said, pointing to the far right at a large steel door. "They've probably got some creatures locked up."

"Fantastic. At least they're behind a door," Lavelle said. "We don't have to go in there."

Powell sighed softly. "Actually...we do."

Blake turned to face him. "What?"

"There's a reason I had to come down here," Powell said, shrugging awkwardly. "It's part of the overall plan, developed by the resistance."

"And what's that?" Blake asked.

"This is where they store C4 charges. We need them, to blow up the planes. There's four planes at the airfield, I know they're planning on loading them up with 'specimens' and bringing them back stateside," Powell explained.

"Jesus," Blake whispered. "Come on. We need to get them."

Before leaving the corridor, he moved forward, to its end, and checked out what was on top of those crates. As it turned out, his checking out was warranted. There was a shotgun leaned up against the wall and a box of shells, as well as a few magazines for a pistol and two incen grenades. Blake took the shotgun, loaded it up, pocketed the rest of the shells and the grenades. After passing the spare pistol magazines to Powell, he led them back out of the corridor and into the room with the three corpses. He quickly checked it out, moving along the wall, making sure there was no one else in there with them. The growling went on.

They were alone, at least in the main room. There was nothing worth grabbing and the soldiers had been painfully under-equipped. One of them had a shotgun and the other two had MP-5s. The shotgun was half-empty and he pocketed the extra four shells. He gave the two salvaged magazines from the MP-5s to Lavelle, who thanked him. They converged on the only other door in the room. Blake had Powell retreat further back and Lavelle stand by the lever that would open it, then switched to his flamethrower and took aim.

"Do it," Blake said.

Lavelle threw the switch. The door slammed open. A Bulldog Walker came screaming out, like a bull released from its pen, and Blake immediately hit it with the flamethrower. The thing shrieked as it went up like a torch and charged straight for Blake. He screamed and dove out of the way, rolled and scrambled to his feet. He heard gunfire and saw the thing, still burning, making for Lavelle, who was backing away from it and shooting it.

Blake raced forward and hit it again. This time, it staggered, paused, staggered forward again, and then collapsed.

"Whew...thanks," Lavelle said.

"Anytime," Blake replied.

They regrouped and stepped in through the open door. The room wasn't very large, and most of it had been smashed up by the Walker. There was, however, a battered but intact case at the back of the room. Blake walked carefully over to it and opened up the case. Inside, he spied four small squares of C4 charges and a detonator.

"Perfect," he muttered.

He pocketed the small charges and passed the detonator to Lavelle, who accepted it without comment and pocketed it.

"Let's go do some damage," Blake said, and began leading them out of the building.


	15. Chapter 15: The Airfield

The airfield turned out to be little more than four hangars and a control tower nestled around a broad, snowbound runway. Blake only had a brief view of it as there was a lull in the winds. He caught sight of several dark shapes that looked vaguely human. For a moment, he wasn't sure if they were 'gasmasks', the slang term the resistance members seemed to have coined for Whitley's personal guard, or 'Things', what he had come to call the monsters that roamed the antarctic wastes. But the purposeful way they moved, the way they seemed to be standing guard, made him certain that they were, in fact, gasmasks.

Then the lull in the storm died, the winds picked back up and the airfield was consumed once more in a shifting gray haze. Blake shivered. They had about fifty meters of open snow to cross before they hit the first building. They were standing next to the runway, on the right side. There were two warehouse-sized hangars dead ahead of them, one after the other, and, precisely opposite of them, were two more, on the left side. At the head of the runway was the control tower, rising above it all like a dead sentinel in the night.

"Come on," Blake said, trembling, his teeth chattering. It was probably negative forty or fifty with the wind chill. They couldn't stay out there for very long.

He led the pair of engineers across the snow, their boots crunching in the recently fallen stuff, and wondered how much longer he could go on. He was tired. He hadn't slept in a long time now. Well, he'd been knocked unconscious once for...well, he wasn't sure for how long, but it wasn't quite the same as sleep. His last meal had been quite small, more of a pick-me-up than anything else. How long would he have to fight this new war? He supposed he should be thankful. Five years in the Army and five years in Special Forces had prepped him pretty well to do this. He supposed a Navy SEAL would be more cut out for it, but he would have to do.

Up ahead, he spied movement. No time to think about hopes and dreams and fears now. Blake was back in hostile territory. He switched to his MP-5, letting his shotgun dangle. He knew he couldn't grab any more guns at this point, except maybe a pistol. A shotgun, a machine gun _and_ a flamethrower was really pushing it. Now he could see the dark movement more clearly. A guard was walking away from them, on patrol just outside of one of the massive, open doors of the first hangar. Blake moved forward, raising his gun, tucking it against his shoulder. He motioned for the other two to stay back, and then ran forward, head on a swivel.

He saw no one else. Blake came within firing distance and let the guy have it. He wasn't proud, shooting someone in the back wasn't his style, but what the hell. The guy deserved it. At least, he sure hoped he did. The gasmask went down with a short scream that was whipped away by the wind. Blake's burst of gunfire cut into the back of his head and neck. Blood sprayed on the white-gray snow. Blake waited a few seconds, but no one else came running. He motioned to the others and they hurried forward. As soon as they were able, they entered the hangar.

Blake looked around, scouting the area, but there didn't seem to be anyone else around. He wondered how many gasmasks there were in Whitley's personal army. How many of them had fallen to the resistance or to the Things.

How many had just given the hell up.

"Come on, let's check this place out," he said, setting off.

The hangar was one huge room. Snow blew in through the open doorway. Most of the vast area was taken up by a cargo plane. It looked ready to go. He wondered how many specimens were onboard. They made a quick circuit of the area, moving past a few stacks of wooden crates and pairs of big, blue shipping containers stamped with the Gen Inc. biohazard logo. All they found were a handful of Scuttlers in between the shipping containers that shrieked and hissed upon discovery. Blake wiped them out with half a magazine.

"Okay, now what?" Powell asked after they had completed their exploration.

"Well, logically, I'd say we plant the first C4 charge. On the plane, I'd imagine," Blake replied.

"Yeah, but where?" Powell asked.

"The rear, near the fuel storage. It'll add to the explosion, probably take out the whole hangar if we're lucky, at least the plane," Lavelle replied.

"Good idea. Come on," Blake said.

They moved underneath the belly of the plane, near the rear, and found the fuel storage. Blake couldn't quite reach it, so he and Lavelle shoved one of the wooden crates under it and he stood atop that. After that, it was a simple matter of attaching the C4 charge.

"Should we blow it now or wait?" Powell asked.

"We can't blow it now," Lavelle replied.

"Why not? Too much attention? There probably aren't that many gasmasks in the base," Blake replied.

"No, we can't because this detonator works on one frequency. When I push the go button, they _all_ go, at the same time. We'd blow ourselves up, too," he replied.

"Oh. Great," Blake muttered. "Well, let's get this show on the road. One down, three to go, and who knows how many bad guys in between."

"Better get to it," Lavelle replied.

They left the hangar and made their way across the snow to the second hangar on this side. This time, there were two guards standing outside in the snow. Blake immediately shouldered his rifle and opened fire. He heard Lavelle do the same beside him with his own MP-5. The guards seemed to be a little quicker on the uptake. They turned and fired back, dropping to one knee, spitting bullets their way. The first one went down quick, Blake caught him in the chest, then the neck, with a couple good shots. But before the second would went down, a bullet came particularly close to Blake and he heard a scream of pain.

The second soldier fell and Blake shot a look to his right. Lavelle was on his knees, groaning, hunched over.

"Lavelle!"

He'd been hit.

"I'm okay," he moaned. "I...ugh, shit."

"Come on," Blake said, making sure they were still alone, then helping the man stand. "We need to get inside."

Lavelle didn't argue. Powell was silent, his eyes wide and staring, terrified. "Come on!" Blake snapped, when he just stood there.

They hurried into the second hangar. It looked empty for the moment. Blake set Lavelle down against a nearby shipping container and took a look at the wound. The bullet had gone in and was probably still in there.

"Shit," he whispered. They had no way to get it out, and there was no way to tell if it had hit something vital.

"It's bad, huh?" Lavelle asked.

"Yeah...maybe...I don't know. The best we can do is patch you up, clean the wound. Shit. This is a real nightmare," Blake muttered.

Powell had a medical kit on him, and Blake took it. He'd gone through some basic first aid. He cracked it open, grabbed a bottle of antiseptic and unscrewed it.

"This is going to hurt," he said.

Lavelle nodded grimly. Blake figured he was already in a shitload of pain. He poured the antiseptic into the wound. Lavelle let out a bark of pain, gritting his teeth, panting painfully. Blake bandaged the wound up, then injected him with some morphine.

"Okay, sit there, rest," Blake said, returning the medkit to Powell. "Powell, stay here with him, make sure nothing happens. I'm going to go check out the hangar."

Powell nodded silently, standing awkwardly beside Lavelle while Blake began making another circuit of the hangar. He found nothing of use, hidden away among the crates and shipping containers, and had to shove another wooden box by himself beneath the belly of the second plane. After twenty minutes, what felt like wasted minutes, Blake had the bomb planted and returned to Powell and Lavelle, who had regained his feet when he saw Blake coming.

"You okay?" he asked. "I mean, I know you're not but-"

"But you want to know if I can go on? Yeah. The morphine took the edge off. I know I shouldn't move around too much, but..." he shrugged unhappily. "What choice do we have, huh?"

"Yeah. Well...shit," Blake said, glancing out into the mist. "Can I convince you two to stay here while I go deal with the next two hangars?" he asked.

"Not a chance," Lavelle replied, smiling grimly.

"Figured not. Come on."

They moved back out into the storm. Blake led, with Powell hanging back and keeping Lavelle company, making sure no one snuck up on them. They passed the main entrance at the base of the control tower. It was unguarded and Blake saw that a few of the windows had been broken out. Fine by him, it meant that the creatures were likely causing trouble for the gasmasks. Up ahead, the other hangars appeared out of the mist. The first one was unguarded. Blake approached cautiously. The doors on these were open also.

He came up to the door and looked inside. Two men in black uniforms were facing away from him, having a smoke, talking, their gasmasks pushed up on their heads. Blake didn't get them a chance. He aimed, fired, aimed, fired. A few seconds and a lot of blood later, both men were lying on the floor, dead, their bodies getting colder by the second.

"All clear!" Blake called.

The pair of engineers joined him. They had a repeat of the previous two hangars: the engineers waited, Blake checked out the area, finding nothing, (except this time he found an errant magazine for his MP-5, which was fine, because he had to reload after killing those two soldiers), and planting the bomb. By the time he got back, however, he saw that Lavelle had paled noticeably, and his bandage was almost soaked through with blood.

"Shit!" Blake snapped.

"Yeah, it's not looking so good," Lavelle said weakly.

Blake took a minute to re-bandage the wound, this time packing it with gauze, much to Lavelle's chagrin. "Sorry," he muttered.

"It's fine," Lavelle replied through gritted teeth.

When he finished, he helped Lavelle back to his feet. Blake frowned, studying the man. He was beginning to suspect that something important had been perforated. He might only have twenty minutes to live, if that. Or he might have hours, he might just have been bleeding out. Either way, they needed a medic. Blake wondered if there were any friendly medics left alive on the continent. Another twenty minutes went by as they traveled to the final hangar, killed the two men on guard there, searched it and planted the final C4 charge.

As they left the fourth hangar, Blake assessed his men. Powell looked good but nervous. He was almost wholly supporting Lavelle now. And Lavelle...he looked horrible. He was deathly pale, his lids were heavy and his breathing was shallow and ragged. Definitely not good. He motioned for his pair of engineers to follow him. They were making for what appeared to be the final structure in the area: the control tower.

It rose above them, shooting into the dead gray skies, a monolithic sentinel that presided with a grim countenance over their grueling battle for survival. Blake tucked the butt of the MP-5 into his shoulder, finger inside the trigger guard. The airfield seemed to be well-guarded. He'd mowed down close to ten guards just planting the C4. Who knew how many were waiting for him in the control tower? But as he approached the main entrance, he didn't see any more posted guards and he ran into no resistance as he opened the door.

They came into a very small, square antechamber that served almost as an airlock, like in the submarines Blake sometimes traveled by. Another door awaited, standing closed, as though daring him to open it. They closed the first door behind him once the pair of engineers were inside. Once they had locked the exterior door, Blake moved to the other door and cautiously opened it up. These, at least, were still manually controlled doors: you didn't need to throw a damned switch just to open them up. Something about that design bugged him.

"Blake..." Lavelle muttered.

As Blake turned, he saw the engineer collapse. Powell let out a small sound of surprise, and tried to make his trip to the floor less painful. Lavelle ended up leaned against the wall, hands clutched over his stomach, face screwed up in pain.

"I don't know...if I'm gonna make it," Lavelle wheezed.

"Just hold on," Blake replied, but it sounded like a lie. What could they do? What could they possibly do? The only hope he had was that _maybe_ there was a medic nearby. But the odds of at that seemed pretty bad and even if they did find him, Blake was concerned that some crucial internal organ had been hit. If that was the case then Lavelle was dead no matter what. It wasn't like they had some high-tech surgical bay nearby.

"Lemme just...rest here a minute," he breathed, his eyes barely open.

"Okay. I'm going to check this out. Powell, stay with him," Blake replied.

Powell nodded. Blake lingered a second longer, then turned and moved through the door. He came to a corridor that extended away from him to the right and ended abruptly to the left, making a sharp turn and continuing on. Dead ahead was a body leaned up against the wall, a man who had once been one of Whitley's gasmask elite. It looked like his guts had been ripped out. The awful scene made Blake think of Lavelle and he broke right, hurrying down the passageway. There was a door in the far wall, at the end of the corridor, which turned left. He came to the end of the corridor and looked down its new length, seeing nothing immediately threatening.

He tried the door, but it was firmly locked.

Frustrated, Blake turned away from it and hurried down the corridor. It was empty, no bodies, no supplies, no other doors. As he reached the end of the corridor and turned left, he realized that the four hallways were arranged in a square that granted access to all areas of the control tower. This new length of corridor, which was cast in a grim, low-level white light and rough plaster walls, had another two doors, opposite each other.

Blake licked his lips and kept his finger on the trigger. He couldn't shake the feeling that something nasty was in the tower with him. The tension continued to rise as he checked the first room and found an empty, white-tiled bathroom. He left it and opened the next door. This one led to a curving stairway that shot up into the air. He closed the door, not wanting to explore it yet. Blake hurried to the final corridor and found one last door.

It had a lever.

Blake sighed and began to reach forward to open it. Then he hesitated. Something was thudding around inside. Something with a lot of power. Blake suddenly threw himself to side right as the door exploded outwards in a spray of cheap material. He rolled onto his back, kicking with his heels to put some distance between him and the thing that had burst through, sliding on his back along the tiles. It was one of the Bulldog Walkers.

He'd dropped his MP-5 and he couldn't get to his shotgun. His flamethrower on the other hand...Blake brought it into play, aiming and squeezing. The Bulldog immediately lit up, the flames licking along its misshapen body. The thing began advancing on him, shrieking and wailing, its alien voice opening up, threatening to rupture his eardrums. Blake rolled over and stumbled to his feet, feeling the heat of the advancing creature. He heard an MP-5 open fire from somewhere behind him. He realized it must've been Powell.

A few seconds later, there was a meaty thump as the beast slid to the floor. The awful acrid stink of burned flesh filled the corridor and Blake coughed as he approached the Thing, moving past it and joining Powell in front of the smashed open door.

"Lavelle's dead," he said quietly.

"What?!" Blake snapped.

"Yeah...he just...went, man. No pulse, nothing. He's cold. I think maybe his liver got hit or something," Powell replied. He sounded defeated.

Blake tossed a quick look into the room that had been broken open, saw there was nothing still obviously alive inside and then hurried past Powell to the entryway. He saw Lavelle was still in the exact same place he'd left him. He was perfectly still. Blake sighed and crouched down in front of the man. He looked like he was sleeping...until you looked at him for a little bit longer. He was utterly, totally still. No longer a human being, reduced in death to merely an object. He patted the man down, not wanting to waste even a single bullet, but it looked like Powell had beat him to the task. Maybe the man would make a half-decent soldier after all.

Blake rejoined Powell in front of the ruined doorway. Neither man spoke as they investigated the room. It was small, crammed with a pair of tables and some chairs. Everything had been practically smashed all to hell. There were a few corpses, a computer, what might have been some supplies, but it had all been ruined.

"Christ, I hate this place," Blake muttered.

"I'm with you on that one," Powell said morosely.

"Come on, I've got a plan. We can kill two birds with one stone," Blake said.

He led Powell over to the door that led to the central stairwell. Blake quickly explained his plan to the man. He was going to detonate the C4. If there was anyone at the top of the tower, there was a good chance the explosions would bring them running...right into the trap. Blake crouched down to the right of the door, a little ways down the passageway, and Powell got to the left. Both men had their MP-5s centered on the door.

Blake hit the detonator.

A general rumble surrounded them for several seconds and the entire area shook. Sure enough, less than a minute later, the door burst open and a group of gasmask wearing assholes came rushing out. Four of them were immediately cut down in a spray of gunfire. Two more tried to return fire, but ended up with their guts and blood splashed across the walls, floor and ceiling. Both men hastily reloaded and waited for more, but no more men came. Blake edged forward and peered cautiously into the room beyond.

No one was left alive. The pair spent the next few minutes patting down the bodies. They managed to salvage half a dozen magazines of ammo for the MP-5 and nothing else, then split the bullets. The pair hurried up the curving stairwell and spent the next ten minutes investigating the top of the tower. Unfortunately, there wasn't much worth investigating. There were just a pair of bloodied, smashed control rooms at the top. The only thing they found among the ruins was a key that Blake really hoped would unlock the door at the bottom.

They retraced their steps and discovered that, sure enough, it was the one they needed. Blake let out a sigh of relief as he stepped through the open door into another, longer antechamber. Two closed doors awaited his inspection, one dead ahead and another to the left, across the room. Blake moved to the left door and opened it up. Nothing inside but a table and a pile of corpses that looked like they'd been subjected to a meat grinder. He closed the door and moved on to the final one, eager to be free of this nightmare.

As soon as the door opened, someone shouted and a spray of pistol fire erupted. Blake and Powell threw themselves backwards, out of the line of fire.

"Don't come any closer!" someone screamed.

"Who goes there?!" Blake called back after a long moment of awkward silence.

"What fucking business is it of yours!? I know Whitley sent you assholes to kill me! I'm not even part of that fucking resistance but it doesn't make a difference to you, does it!?" the voice yelled back at them.

"We're not with Whitley!" Blake called.

A long pause. "Come in with your hands up, and no funny shit!"

Blake and Powell stood and slowly entered the room beyond. It looked like a maintenance area, one far corner of the room occupied by a heating system, another occupied by a pair of tables pushed together, scattered with spare parts and tools. There were several boxes and barrels along the peripheral of the room. In the center of it all stood a harried, pale-faced man with a blonde crew cut and wide, wild eyes. He held a pistol in a shaking hand and sported the crimson plus symbol, beanie and white jumpsuit of a medic.

"My name is Blake, I'm with Special Forces," Blake said slowly, keeping his hands up.

"I'm-" Powell began.

"Powell, yeah, I remember you. Saw you around the base a few times...shit, I've heard they're only killing medics and engineers, which is pretty fucking stupid in my book. Who's going to fix this when it all breaks down?" he snapped. The man lowered the pistol, but didn't put it away. Slowly, Blake and Powell lowered their hands.

"Who are you?" Blake asked.

"Reed," the man shot back. "You're with Special Forces? What the fuck are you doing down here?" he asked.

"How much do you know?" Blake replied.

"Apparently not much...shit, I was just getting ready to get the hell out of here when I heard an explosion. Someone blew the planes up! I was going to stowaway onboard but...well, I guess that plan is fucked now."

"Where can we go?" Blake asked, not quite wanting to own up to it. If this man wasn't a member of the resistance, he might be more difficult to convert, but the simple shared goal of survival should be enough for now.

It was not lost on Blake that they had found a medic not ten minutes after Lavelle had died.

"Only one place in the area left," Reed said. "Out the back, there's a maintenance shaft that serves as a kind of back entrance to this big underground facility Gen Inc. put together. I'm not sure what the fuck they were doing...but it's got to be better than here, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess so." Blake hesitated. "So...I don't have any test kits."

"I've got one," Reed replied. He frowned, stared at Blake and Powell, then heaved a sigh. "Oh great, _I'm_ going to have to use it. You've got a flamethrower and you'll argue that if both of you were infected then you'd just attack me...hell," he muttered. "Fine."

He tucked the pistol into his belt and pulled out a test kit. He stuck it into his bicep and pulled the trigger. The little glass chamber filled with blood and all three men tensed, waiting in miserable, rapt silence for something to happen.

Nothing did.

Blake let out a sigh. "Okay, what you did was fair," he said. "So, to honor that fairness and in the spirit of cooperation, here."

He passed the medic his shotgun and all the shells for it. Reed took it and muttered a thankful reply, checking the gun out. When he seemed satisfied, he pointed to the back of the room, where the only other door was.

"Come on," he muttered.

They were led outside, to a fenced-off area with a collection of shipping containers and a small shack that, once opened, revealed a ladder descending into the earth.

"Deeper into the rabbit hole," Blake muttered miserably as he started down.


	16. Chapter 16: Sidetracked

"So, you have _no_ idea what's down here? Either of you?" Blake asked as he continued to lead his brave army of one scared engineer and one grumpy medic into the ice and dirt beneath Antarctica. They'd been climbing down for a few minutes.

"I got nothing," Powell replied.

"Same here. All I know is that Gen Inc. and the military have been working on the place for a while now, so it's gotta either be big or intricate. Given the shit I've come across so far, I'd bet they're doing some kind of research down there on these damned things."

"Yeah, probably," Blake muttered unhappily.

He came to the end of the ladder and was admitted access to an open-faced 'room' with rock walls, carved out of a cave wall. There wasn't much in the room, just a few lockers that yielded nothing worthwhile, so he walked carefully to the edge of it. The cavern beyond was dark, and a rough stairwell had been carved into a descending rocky slope that led down to the rest of the area. He could just make out what might have been the boxy, tall metal structure of a cargo elevator and a small cabin-like wooden structure.

"Come on," he said quietly. "Let's see what we've got here."

Flicking on the flashlight he'd fit into his chest pocket, Blake cast a sharp, pale beam of light into the darkness. It brightened the area just enough to confirm the two things he'd seen: an elevator shaft and a little single-room structure. There didn't seem to be anyone or anything around in the chilly, rock cavern, so Blake first investigated the elevator. It was a simple affair, meant to hold no more than two or three people max. It ascended well above them, into the darkness. The small control panel revealed where it went.

"Fielding Testing," Blake muttered. "That sounds important."

"Sure as shooting," Reed replied.

Blake frowned when he spied an unhappily familiar black slot next to the buttons. He had an inkling what it was and, sure enough, when he pushed the button, the panel flashed red and buzzed angrily at him.

"Fantastic, we need a security card."

"Well, let's see if we can find one around here," Powell said.

They left the elevator and began moving towards the tiny shack. Beyond it, built into the rock wall, were a huge pair of doors that looked liked they, when activated, slid into the walls on racks. They looked damaged, blackened and bulged slightly outwards, as though an explosion had occurred from within. While Powell and Reed began trying to find a way into the cabin, Blake approached the double-doors. They were partially open. He placed his flashlight through the crack and peered inside. Beyond were tons of rock, the result of a cave-in, and about half a dozen smashed trucks. Abruptly, it came to Blake what he was looking at.

The bomb that had gone off earlier, and those tunnels he'd been in: this is where at least one of them had led to. A loud bang exploded through the cavern and, at the same time, one of the men screamed Blake's name.

Blake spun around and saw that not only had they found the door to the tiny shack, but it had a huge, outward dent in it. As he took a step closer it, a second dent appeared. Both men were backing away from it, weapons raised. Blake brought his flamethrower into play. Had to be a Walker. Sure enough, when, a second later, the door burst open, it was a huge, burly, misshapen Walker that stumbled out into the cavern.

The men screamed and opened fire, spraying it down with red hot bullets. The beast shrieked and roared and screamed in fury as bits of came off and its blackened blood was sprayed across the structure behind it. It seemed to be having a hard time deciding who to go after. Which gave Blake enough time to race up and hose it down with some flames. The beast went up like a torch, the shrieking getting higher pitched. It ran towards Blake, who sidestepped, narrowly avoiding it. By the time the beast managed to stop and get turned around, its ticket was up. It collapsed into a smoldering heap on the icy floor.

"God _damn_ they smell bad!" Reed complained.

"Yeah," Blake agreed. "Especially when they're cooked like that. Let's see if our new friend was hiding anything worthwhile."

He had an inkling, (that was more of a desperate hope than anything else), that the shack would hold the keycard. But, after five minutes of searching, they didn't find a damned thing. Stymied, the men spent another fifteen minute searching the cavern over, and Blake was nearly prepared to plunge into the ruined tunnel, when Powell finally turned something up. They found a ladder, tucked away in one corner of the cavern, that led to a ventilation shaft.

"Do we _really_ have to?" Reed complained.

"Yeah, I'm afraid so," Blake replied. "It's our only option."

"Goddamn it. I hate this place," Reed muttered with real vehemence.

Blake didn't blame him. He _really_ didn't want to go crawling around through the vents again. But he was a soldier, damn it, and he'd put up with it. So, he led by example, climbing the ladder and hauling himself into the vent duct. It was cramped, but doable. After about ten minutes of crawling through the squalid confines of the metal ducts, he finally began to hear something. It sounded like all manner of machinery. Well, that was probably good news. It at least meant he was heading towards somewhere important.

Finally, he spied a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. The end of the vent duct he was presently in had no mesh grating over it, and he could see a network of pipes, running up and down. As he approached it, someone in white ran past it, from right to left. Blake hesitated, bringing his MP-5 to bear. His patience was rewarded. A pair of men in black camo and gasmasks went by. Blake scooted forward as fast as he could and leaned out, first looking back, confirming there was no one coming up 'behind' him, then looking forward.

He was on some kind of catwalk, suspended high above the ground in a tall, underground shaft. He just caught the pair of hostiles moving to the edge of the catwalk, about to turn right onto another catwalk, giving chase to the medic. He opened fire. Both men went down screaming. Once he was sure they were dead, he hauled himself out, then covered Powell and Reed while they came out. Once they were out, he led them cautiously up the ramps towards the medic. He studied the room as he ascended, feeling very small in comparison to his environment. The place was _huge_. It was essentially a giant, rectangular vertical shaft.

Catwalks wrapped the exterior walls, heading up, up, up towards the top, which was where Blake and the others were. Taking up most of the middle of the room were huge pipes, a complex network of pipes of all different sizes. Occasionally, scalding hot steam would escape some of these pipes, blowing directly into the path of the catwalks. They had to stop twice and wait for the steam to quit blowing before reaching the medic.

"Hold-hold it!" he cried.

The man was unarmed, backed into a corner near a stack of crates, the absolute top of the vertical shaft. The end of the line.

"What's your name?" Blake asked after setting Powell and Reed on guard duty behind him, to make sure no one else snuck up on him.

"C-Cohen," the man said. "Please don't kill me. I'm not one of _them,_ " he whispered.

Blake wasn't sure whether or not he meant one of them as in Whitley's gasmask squad or one of them, as in infected.

"You know word or even actions aren't enough to prove that," Blake said.

"Yeah, but...please don't kill me. I don't want to die," he replied quietly. He was trembling in fear.

"I'm not going to kill you. Unfortunately, I don't have any tests on me...what are you doing here? For that matter, where even is here?" Blake replied.

"I was looking for test kits, actually, but I ran into some of those gasmask assholes and they chased me all the way up here. As for here, well, this is...well, as far as I've been able to tell, a kind of joint training and specimen storage facility. They kind of kept me and the others in the dark about what, specifically, they were doing here," Cohen explained.

"So what's the situation?"

"Obviously, everything's gone to hell. The specimens broke out, then Whitley's band of maniacs started killing everything in sight...me and a few others were holed up in the offices downstairs but, we don't really trust each other. No way to tell who's who. _That's_ why we were going for the test kits," Cohen explained.

"We?" Blake replied.

"Yeah, me and another engineer headed out, but he got gunned down when we were caught."

"We've got company!" Powell suddenly shouted. He punctuated this statement with a barrage from his MP-5.

"Shit! Stay here, don't move, don't do _anything,_ " Blake said.

"Can do," Cohen replied.

Blake hurried back down the ramp and then skidded to a halt about halfway down, spying a break in the pipes, a window through which he spied a collection of gasmasks. He immediately sighted the bastards and opened fire, spraying their position with everything left in his current magazine. As he reloaded, dropping back out of sight, he waited for return fire, but there was none. Blake slapped the fresh magazine in and peered cautiously back through the window. He could see nothing but a blood-spattered expanse of rock wall now.

"Anything!?" Blake called.

"That was it!" Powell called back.

"Shit, all right. Cohen! You're leading us back down to where the others are at. And if you know where any kits are, point them out. I get the feeling we'll need them," Blake said.

Cohen responded positively and came out from hiding. Blake still wasn't willing to arm the man, not just because he wasn't sure whether or not he was a real human being, but also because of his demeanor. He had all the classic signs of a civilian thrown into a nasty firefight. No training, obvious terror, lots of chances for some kind of screw-up that might result in Blake or someone else getting shot in the back on accident.

They spent close to half an hour working their way down those damned ramps. It seemed that for ever ten meters of progress they made, the quartet ran into some kind of obstacle. First, there were a cluster of Scuttlers roaming around aimlessly that had to be put down. Then, they ran into a huge, beastly Walker that seemed particularly tough. Blake went through the rest of his current fuel canister bringing the big beast down, dropping him down to only _one_ canister of fuel. On top of that, he ended up burning through six more magazines for his MP-5 combating close to a dozen gasmasks, only regaining three magazines salvaged from their corpses.

When they reached the very bottom, Cohen had them stop.

"There," he said, pointing.

There were two doors, only two ways to go. One leading dead ahead, the other to the right. The one Cohen pointed to was the dead ahead door.

"That's where the kits are?" Blake asked.

"Yeah, and some medical supplies," Cohen replied.

Blake nodded. "Stay here. You, too Powell."

"Got it," Powell replied.

He took Reed to the door and opened it up. The room beyond appeared to be a makeshift infirmary. There were a row of foldout tables along the left wall, serving as examination tables, and more crates and foldout tables along the other walls, serving as workspace and storage. There was blood on the walls, pooled on the floor, medical supplies scattered everywhere.

"What a fucking mess," Reed muttered.

They spent close to ten minutes sorting through the catastrophe, but, for once, it paid off. They found five test kits and two full medical kits. Blake even managed to find a backpack among the wreckage. He took it and placed both medkits and all the test kits in the pack, then shrugged into it. He and Reed rejoined the others.

"So, moment of truth?" Powell asked.

Blake shook his head. "No, I want to do this with those others...how many are back in the offices?" he asked, looking at Cohen.

"Just two. Or at least, there should be. Engineers. Ryan and Stolls," Cohen replied.

"Great, let's get going."

The quartet made their way through a pair of burned out, bloodied concrete corridors filled with bodies and boxes. Blake was beginning to feel seriously tired. He didn't know how long he could keep running on adrenaline like this. He wanted to take a break, to sit down and rest for half an hour, get a bite to eat, a freaking hamburger and beer would go a long way towards soothing the fire in his brain. He wanted a god's-honest nights' rest. But he knew it wasn't coming. This was the continent of death and misery, a haunted place of no sleep, no rest, no stop. He couldn't envision a time where he would be allowed to get a real break.

They found Ryan and Stolls.

Each man had a pistol in hand, pointed at the other man's head. They stood inside of a ring of desks in the center of a large room with several doors around its edges. Both men were frozen, like statues, the centerpiece of the room.

"Whoa, hold on, let's not do anything stupid," Blake said immediately.

"Who the fuck are you!?" one of them snapped.

"Captain Blake, US Special Forces. Let's just put the guns down and talk this out. Whatever it is, I'm sure we can solve it without violence."

There was a short pause, and when neither man backed down, Cohen stepped forward. "Guys, I'm back. I found the kits!" he said.

"Cohen!?" one of them glanced over. "Oh thank _god,_ " he breathed. "Look, Ryan, I'll lower my gun if you'll lower yours," he said.

The other man, Ryan, stared hard back at him. Finally, he nodded tightly and took a step back, lowering his gun slowly. The first man, Stolls, did the same. Blake breathed a sigh of relief. "Okay, I'm the only one with a flamethrower, so I'm calling the shots," he said. "Everyone line up and presents arms!" he called.

With varying degrees of reluctance, the men gathered in a large, open space next to the ring of desks that dominated the center of the room. Blake wanted to get this over with quickly. Who knew how many Thing beasts and gasmasks were roaming around? He selected one of the men at random: Ryan. As he began to pull the test kit out and test the man, however, abruptly, Ryan batted the kit away. It flew across the room and shattered. At the same time, he shoved Blake back so hard that his feet literally left the floor and _he_ flew across the room. He didn't shatter as he hit the wall, then the floor, but it sure felt like it.

When he stumbled painfully to his feet, a scene of pure, screaming chaos awaited him. Both Ryan _and_ Reed were transforming, bursting out into Thing beasts. Ryan had sprouted a tendril arm that ended in a sharp, bony point. Blake watched in horror as he raised it up, reared it back and put it, fast like lightning, through Powell's skull. Cohen and Stolls were screaming and running, the only man among them armed was Stolls, who was too terrified to fire his weapon. Blake shot to his feet and raced forward, flamethrower in hand.

He lit up the trio, knowing that Powell was either dead or as good as. A chorus of voices began shrieking in inhuman rage and agony as the three became one, forged into a twisted sculpture of bone and flesh by the flame's powerful fingers. Blake, Cohen and Stolls kept their distance as the Thing beasts slowly died. When, finally, the flames were reduced to smoldering embers and the bodies had grown still and silent, Stolls finally spoke up.

"I _knew_ Ryan was infected," he muttered.

"Fantastic," Blake said. "Cause it's your turn."

"Fine," Stolls replied. "I'm human, I know it, this'll prove it."

By some miracle, Blake discovered, the test kits in his backpack hadn't been broken when he'd been thrown across the room. He selected one, stuck it in Stolls' exposed arm and pulled the trigger. The blood came out, the chemical mixed, nothing happened. Blake let out a long sigh of relief and began grabbing the next one.

"Told you," Stolls said.

"Yep. My turn," Blake replied.

He tested himself and, as expected, nothing happened. Finally, he and Stolls turned on Cohen, who still looked a bit out of it from all their experiences. When the time came, however, he didn't fight back. He was tested and he was clean.

"Well, that solves _that_ problem," Cohen said, brightening a bit, coming back to reality.

"Yeah. And now we've got three more corpses...shit. I really liked Powell," Blake muttered.

They tried to recover the weapons from the three dead men but, unfortunately, they'd all been rendered useless. So Cohen remained unarmed. Blake supposed they could backtrack, loot some of the bodies they'd produced on the way down...but, all at once, he realized that he needed a break, a real one, so he turned to face the others.

"I need to sit down for a minute," he said, finding a chair in the island of desks and sitting in it. He was surprised by how immediately comfortable he felt around people who had been proven to be human, as though that were all that mattered. In this stark, hostile environment and insane situation...maybe it was.

Blake spent the next ten minutes bringing both men up to speed on his own personal situation, why he was down here, his qualifications, Whitley's betrayal, everything that had happened since waking up in that bloodied research facility.

"So, that's my story," he said. "What about you two? How'd you end up in this situation?"

"Unhappily," Stolls replied. "The place we're in right now...it's a testing facility for those things. They do all kinds of weird research here, but...they've been doing less of it recently. I've overheard whispers that they had just begun moving test subjects and key personnel to a newer, bigger facility somewhere else in the antarctic."

"They're _still_ building?!" Blake cried.

"Yeah. I get the feeling, actually, that this is all small peanuts compared to what they're doing. I've seen a _lot_ of people and materials coming down almost nonstop."

"Great," Blake muttered.

"Yeah. So, anyway, I was an engineer here. I largely made sure that everything was wired right and occasionally they called me in to fix up tractors when they broke down. I started catching wind of some kind of resistance not too long ago and decided to see what the hell we were resisting against. I had a talk with another engineer and a medic who were coordinating and they showed me what was happening: Gen Inc. and the military were planning on bringing these things back to the world! After what I realized that could mean, I decided to join up right away. I helped sabotage this place with Ryan and some others."

"I was that medic," Cohen threw in.

"Yeah. So, when I set some holding pens to open up and the automatic defense systems to fail, we turned on the gasmasks, killed a lot of them, then had to fight the Thing creatures, too. It was all a mess. There were close to twenty of us at first but...well, now I guess it's just me and Cohen, and you now. We tried to secure the facility but the Things quickly outnumbered us and it was all we could do to fall back and lock the doors behind us. We...really don't have a plan anymore," Stolls said, unhappily, staring at the pistol in his hand.

"My story is pretty much the same as his," Cohen said quietly. Blake still thought the man might be shell-shocked, or maybe he was just a quiet individual.

"Well, good news," Blake said, "I'm here to give you a plan and a sense of purpose."

"Oh yeah? What's that? They bombed the damned elevator going up so we're trapped down here," Stolls said.

"There's another lift, through some vents, back in a cave. All I need is some kind of executive card to unlock it."

"Hey! There might be something like that around here," Cohen said.

"Yeah, there's a chance," Stolls said, sounding more upbeat. "And even if it's not here, I bet I could hotwire the damned thing."

"Well...great, let's get searching," Blake said, slowly standing, popping his back, neck and shoulders. It wasn't quite what he had hoped for, but he really wanted out of this place. The less lingering, the better in his book. And, of course, he felt the press of time: for every minute he was down here, dicking around, Whitley was that much closer to completing his plan. He checked out his weapons, making sure they were all ready and in working order, then looked around the room they were: there were lots of doors to chose from.

Despite their best efforts to move quickly, the trio spent the next _hour_ working their way through the area. Most of the rooms they encountered were either bloodied, devastated office complexes or bloody, devastated holding areas that doubled as bio-labs. There were a fair amount of nasty surprises waiting for them in the form of leftover test subjects. Blake ended up emptying all ammo for his MP-5 in the process, and by the time they finished up, he only had one canister of fuel left in his flamethrower with which to defend himself. They'd managed to find a shotgun and some shells for Stolls, who thus relinquished his pistol to Cohen, who slowly came out of his daze over the course of the adventure.

Blake also ended up using all of the grenades he'd managed to collect, both flame and fragmentation, in defeating the half-dozen Walkers they encountered. He began to feel light by the time they'd located the damned security card, tucked away in some forgotten desk drawer in (of course) the very last office they decided to check out. Before they left, now that they had cleared the place out, Blake decided to take a break in the small, relatively untouched lounge they had discovered during their investigation.

"What did you used to do, before all this?" Blake asked as he raided the refrigerator he'd discovered in the break room. Cohen was in the bathroom, relieving himself. Stolls had already found a ready-heat frozen cheeseburger, had put it in the microwave that thankfully still worked and was now looking for mustard and ketchup.

"I worked for Gen Inc," Stolls replied. "They picked me up right outta college about ten years ago. I did three years at corporate HQ in Oregon, shot up the ladder, and they ended up giving me the job of going all over the world to their other company sites and making sure stuff got set up right. They offered me a big bonus to come down here and do it but...I never figured anything like this would be waiting for me."

The microwave dinged. Just in time, too. Blake had discovered a box with four frozen beef and cheese burritos in it. He stuffed it in the microwave just as soon as he was able and then went back to the fridge, grabbed a bottle of water and drained it. Then he found a couple of cans of Coke and pulled them out, setting them at the table and waiting on his burritos to cook. Just at that moment, a toilet flushed and, a few seconds later, Cohen emerged. Stolls stood up, half his hamburger already gone, and went into the bathroom.

"My turn," he said before disappearing behind the closed door.

"What about you?" Blake asked as Cohen began searching for his own meal.

"What about me what?" he replied.

"What did you do before all this?"

"Oh. I was a doctor. Med school and all that jazz, two years in a hospital before Gen Inc. snapped me up. Two years with them before they offered me this job. I was recently divorced, no kids, nothing really worth staying for. But, if I had known all this shit was going to go down once I got here...I definitely would've stayed behind."

"You and me both," Blake muttered.

His burritos were done. Soon, all three men were eating in silence, all of them with one eye on the door. They finished off their food and sat in relative contentment for about five minutes before, finally, begrudgingly, Blake rose to his feet, took a quick leak, then came back.

"Well, let's get back to it," he said.

Both men made grumbling noises, but stood and readied their weapons. Blake didn't want to get back to it, but he knew he needed to, or he'd just keep sitting there and probably fall asleep. But food was sleep, wasn't it? Where had he heard that? They made their way out of the office complex, back through the concrete corridors and up the huge, spiraling catwalk that wrapped around the miles of piping deep beneath the ice. Blake led them back through the vents and into the darkened cave with the last elevator out of hell.

"Any idea where this goes?" he asked as they stepped aboard.

Both men responded negatively.

With a small sigh, and a whispered prayer, Blake activated the lift.


	17. Chapter 17: End of Days

When the elevator settled into place, Blake felt a wave of unease wash over him. The room they had come to was utterly, totally empty. Everything was gone. It was just a big, empty area. His boots echoed as they hit the floor.

"What happened?" he murmured, stepping out of the lift.

"I don't know," Stolls said. "I thought there'd be more stuff here."

"Maybe...maybe they pulled out," Cohen suggested.

"Christ, if they're fleeing...come on!" Blake called.

He ran towards the nearest door and yanked it open. An equally barren hallway awaited his inspection, just a bleak length of metal. The trio ran down the corridor, past open doors and vacant rooms. Occasionally they would spy signs of battle: spent shell casings, blood on the floor, bullet holes in the walls.

But no bodies.

Not even _parts_ of bodies.

Blake had a demented thought about not wanting to waste anything, even the corpses of the fallen. Gen Inc. and Whitley's gasmasks must've decided to pull everything out, either to another facility in Antarctica, like Stolls had suggested, or possibly off the continent entirely. All the more reason to hurry up and find that psycho.

As Blake led the engineer and the medic through the abandoned facility, he felt a curious sense of dislocation settle over him. This far away from civilization, in an abandoned facility that had clearly seen its share of brutal warfare, it was easy to feel that perhaps he and these other two were to be counted among the last humans left alive on the entire planet. Blake made himself focus, made himself concentrate. He felt like he was close to some kind of conclusion, and he couldn't screw it up now, not after he'd come so far.

Finally, they came to the end of the facility. Their exit to the world, back into the frigid, antarctic wastes, came in the form of a large garage-style door. It opened to a cargo ramp. The light was better, which meant that the storm must be lessening, giving the sun a chance to actually do its job. At first, Blake was grateful for this light, it meant that their work would be that much easier. Even the lessening of the winds meant that they had less snow blowing around and that visibility would be better than freaking three feet in front of him.

And then he instantly regretted this development because no sooner had they approached the garage door than did a sniper round come shrieking through it and drive a path directly through Stolls' head. Blake screamed and stumbled away, sprayed with blood, and had a momentary glimpse of a headless corpse still standing. Then Stolls' body fell to its knees, spurting blood like a broken fire hydrant directly into the air.

"Sniper!" he screamed.

Cohen didn't have a chance.

While Blake was diving to get out of the bastard's line of sight, Cohen was screaming, stumbling away, and then poof! His head disappeared in a plume of crimson gore. Blake screamed again, involuntary, as if he himself had been shot, and then finished rolling out of the way. There was another shot, one that came uncomfortably close to him, he could _feel_ the fucking thing as it displaced air, traveling very close to him.

But he was safe.

He finished rolling and made for the wall. As he regained his footing, Blake looked around frantically, expecting some kind of attack. But there was nothing. His eyes fell on Cohen and Stolls. Two good men, _gone_ , just like that. It made him sick, but he didn't have the luxury of time or emotions. The time to kill was upon him.

He had seen something before, something he'd been in the middle of looking towards when the sniper hit, and now he looked at it again. A small set up, a pair of crates really, were pushed up against the wall to the side of the open door. It was on his side of the room, thankfully. Atop it was a small cache of weapons and ammunition. Perfect. Blake hurried over and looked over his treasure trove. A quartet of flash-bang grenades, a sniper rifle with a small stack of ammo, some magazines for an MP-5. Blake immediately grabbed the rifle.

It was time for some payback.

His first objective was distraction. He grabbed a flash-bang, primed it and tossed it out beyond the confines of the warehouse-sized room he was in. There was a pause, then it went off. Blake leaned out, rifle scope pressed against his eye, other eye closed, and sighted. Sure enough, up ahead, at the end of a small valley created by the ice and snow, was a man ducked partially down behind a row of crates. Blake zeroed the sights on his face, (he was wearing a gasmask, of course he was), and squeezed the trigger.

This time, it was an enemy's head that vaporized on a spray of dark gore. Blake caught movement: another soldier. He readjusted and fired. A third ran across, trying to escape, and Blake caught him, too. He waited a full sixty seconds and, when no one else moved, lowered the rifle. The time to kill had come. Yes. Blake rose and returned to the small cache of supplies. He pocketed everything, every last bullet, and then moved over to Stolls' and Ryan's corpses, grimly preforming the posthumous search of their bodies.

"Sorry," he muttered as he finished gathering up everything they'd had to offer. He wasn't sure what he was apologizing about or why, but it felt right.

Then Blake left the abandoned building and plunged into a network of interconnected ice valleys. He wasn't entirely sure how long he spent in that network, and everything seemed to happen under a red haze. There were gasmasks in the network, lots of them, dozens, spread out along its frozen length. Blake first used up every single round in the sniper rifle he'd recovered, as well as the rounds he found on the corpse he'd produced.

When that was used up, he put Stolls' shotgun to use, and then Cohen's pistol, blasting away, painting the icy countryside red. He took some damage: several rounds in the combat vest he wore that would surely leave deep and painful bruises, a round that grazed his bicep, then another that cut into his outer right thigh, both of which he'd had to stop and bandage. At the end, when he found himself shivering, covered in blood and on approach to a huge, dome-shaped structure that looked important, he was down to just his flamethrower and MP-5. He hurried forward, alone for now, boots crunching in the snow.

His mind largely blank, fury boiling through his blood, Blake pushed the door open. It creaked loudly. The interior was poorly lit and a little corridor awaited him. He moved down it, MP-5 tucked tightly into his shoulder, eyes wide and wild and hunting for more enemies to kill. He followed the corridor to its end.

And then, suddenly, there he was.

Whitley.

He stood in a small, open area near some barrels and crates. He was alone. He was unarmed. Blake stopped ten feet away, covering him with the MP-5. It was everything he could do to keep from squeezing the trigger.

"Game over, Whitley," he growled.

Whitley smiled at him. "I don't think so, Blake," he said. Blake hesitated. There was something...wrong, with his voice. It wasn't Whitley, not exactly. "I control you. Right now, I control every man on this continent. Your pathetic sabotage of the consignment at the airstrip only delayed the inevitable. There is an evac team on its way to this location. Once I take the chopper I will begin global infection."

Blake felt a slow horror icily creeping its way through his guts, ensnaring him in its wintry grasp. Whitley's voice had a flat, empty quality to it, as though this were no man talking to him, but an imitation of a man, and a bad one. Whitley offered him a grim, rough approximation of a smile that was somehow starkly inhuman.

"Game over?" he asked, a horrible amusement creeping into his voice. "No, Blake. This game is just beginning."

Blake shot at him, then. Not at Whitley, directly, but at the stack of barrels he was standing next to. The barrels went up in flames immediately, and sprayed burning fuel all over the place. All over Whitley. At first, he was writhing and screaming, and Blake thought _'I did it, I won'_. He had just enough time to enjoy that thought before Whitley stopped writhing, stopped screaming. He stood perfectly still, covered in flaming fuel, staring at Blake with stone-cold, alien eyes. Blake watched in stark terror, unable to move, unable to think.

"Be seeing you, Captain," Whitley said.

He turned and walked away, still on fire, in between a pair of shipping containers. And then he was gone. Blake stood, rooted to his position, for a long time. Long enough for the flames to burn out. At first, his brain was frozen, unable to function. Then, as the minutes ticked by, his mind came back online, but he still couldn't move.

What could he do?

If Whitley had been human, that should have killed him.

If Whitley had been a Thing...that _still_ should have killed him.

So what did it mean?

Finally, when he heard a door open somewhere, and muffled voices, Blake's mind really kicked back on. He couldn't stop, not now, not after he'd come so far. There had to be _something_ he could do. He began making his way out of the dome, following in Whitley's footsteps. He navigated a maze of half-walls and shipping containers. When he found a contingent of a half-dozen gasmasks, he blew through them almost without thinking about it. In a haze of blood and gunsmoke, Blake slapped a fresh magazine in and stepped out into the cold once more.

Up ahead, he spied more shipping containers and some kind of scaffolding, rising out of the snowy mist like a tower. Distantly, he could hear the beat of helicopter blades. Whitley's evac? Had to be. Blake began hurrying through the shipping containers, towards the scaffolding. It seemed that Whitley had run out of gasmasks to cover his ass. Blake was alone. The scaffolding was bare and empty as well, a skeletal structure in the struggling gray light. He passed it, spying another ice valley up ahead. The chopper was getting closer.

Blake had no idea what he would find on the other side of that valley, but somehow, someway, what he did find made a strange kind of sense. Here was the alien spacecraft, (hadn't a report he read somewhere claimed it was very likely the point of origin of the infection?), and atop it...Whitley. He stood amidst a field of stacked barrels and crates. He was waving something down...Blake glanced up and behind him, the helicopter.

Suddenly, Whitley collapsed.

Blake hesitated, his MP-5 tucked against his shoulder. The chopper appeared, blazing over Blake's head by a mere twenty feet. It came to hover over Whitley...who still hadn't regained his feet. Blake realized, with horror, that he was changing, mutating. The chopper hovered for a few seconds, then broke away and began to circle the area from a distance. Blake ignored it. Obviously, they weren't going to pick Whitley up now.

He was getting larger, somehow, growing into something huge and long, shooting into the air like a damned magical beanstalk. It continued growing, first eight feet. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. A horrible, twisted caricature of Whitley was on the end of it, writhing in the frozen antarctic air. Blake watched in stunned horror.

How was he supposed to deal with this!?

Suddenly, he was aware of the helicopter. It was coming back. In fact, it was landing, just twenty feet shy of his current location. He'd never thought of escape before, but now? Could he really just leave? Then he spied a gun mounted on the side of the chopper, a big, fat gattling gun, and something like a plan flickered through his brain. He hurried over to the chopper, which appeared to be waiting for him, and kept his gun raised.

He had no idea who was onboard.

The side cargo door was open. Blake climbed in, checked the cabin, found only the pilot's seat occupied. And not by someone wearing a gasmask or a jumpsuit or a Gen Inc. logo. No, it was a heavily bearded man whose eyes were hidden behind big blue sunglasses, the top of his head hidden beneath, of all things, a sombrero. His beard was covered in frost and he offered Blake a big, grim smile. Slowly, Blake lowered his MP-5.

"Look friend, we ain't got much time," he said, and he sounded incredibly familiar, though Blake had no idea who he was.

"No shit! You got a plan?" he asked, desperate for an answer.

The man bobbed his head once. "The military never entirely trusted Gen Inc. They planted a massive amount of thermite beneath the alien craft. I was trying to set it off," here, he held up a detonator similar to the one Blake had used to stop the aircraft from taking off, "but it's busted. So I was thinking you could get on that gun and hit those barrels. The explosion should be enough to set off the thermite and take that big bastard out."

"On it!" Blake called.

He slung his rifle and grabbed the controls for the gattling gun. The mysterious pilot brought the chopper immediately into the air, rising into the dead gray sky. Blake pointed the gun at the nearest stack of barrels and opened fire. The Whitley-Thing was still there. If anything, it had gotten bigger somehow. The barrels went up in a brilliant red-orange burst of flame. Blake waited, but nothing happened. The flames spread a bit, and the base of the creature caught on fire, but otherwise there was no real reaction.

"Keep shooting!" the pilot yelled.

Blake shook himself, aimed and fired again. Suddenly, the creature let out a horrible howl that must have echoed for miles over the antarctic wastelands and swung its body towards the chopper. Damn near got it, too, but the pilot was faster and he swung the thing to the side, narrowly avoiding the reaching grasp of the Whitley-Thing.

Blake took aim and fired again. This time, he hit another stack of barrels, which once more exploded into a mean, red-orange display. But, once more, there was no big bang, no reaction. Blake shouted a curse.

"Hold on! Gotta swing around to get a better angle!" the pilot yelled.

Blake decided not to sit around with his thumb up his ass, so he took aim at the Whitley-Thing and opened fire. The fifty-cal rounds punched into the knotted, gray flesh of the immense beast, the biggest Thing Blake had come across by far, and sprayed its black as midnight blood across the air. But it seemed to be doing little damage. The chopper swung around, barely avoiding another two swings by the titanic monstrosity, and Blake had his shot. He aimed, fired and waited. This time, there was a bang. A _big_ one.

A white flare burst into existence somewhere on the far right side of the craft. Blake cried out and closed his eyes, momentarily blinded as he felt the chopper swing out and away from the site. He expected it to die down, for some reason, but it didn't. By the time he'd opened his eyes and regained his sight, they were a lot farther away and the huge, alien spacecraft was nothing more than a brilliant burning ball of white light.

The Whitley-Thing was nowhere to be seen, consumed by the thermite.

Blake stood there in the cold, gripping the gattling gun, unable to truly believe he was done. That Whitley was dead. That he had won. Finally, he pulled the gun back inside and slid the door shut, then he trudged up to the cockpit and collapsed into the co-pilot's seat. Tiredly, he looked over at the man in the other seat.

"You know I have to test you, right?" he asked.

"Likewise," the pilot shot back at him. "There's a pair of kits in the glove compartment."

Sure enough, there was a little compartment that opened up in the dashboard, and it _did_ remind Blake of a glove compartment, and there were two kits in there. He did himself first, watching his blood fill up the little container, the chemicals mixing...at some point, the pilot had produced a blowtorch and was pointing it Blake.

Nothing happened.

"Thank god," the man muttered. He held out his hand. "My turn."

Since his hands were full with piloting, Blake did the test for him. He waited for the worst, but, for once, was rewarded instead of punished. This man was not infected.

"Who are you?" Blake asked.

"Name's MacReady, R. J. Helicopter pilot, US Outpost-"

"North Thirty-One," Blake finished.

MacReady glanced over at him, eyes still hidden behind those huge blue sunglasses. "How'd you know that?" he asked.

"Captain Blake, J. F. US Special Forces. I was the guy assigned to investigating your outpost. I found your recording, about how it rips through your clothes when it takes you over."

MacReady stared at him for a moment longer, then let out a little disbelieving laugh and returned his gaze to the front windshield. "Holy shit, talk about nuts. I never thought anyone would listen to that fucking thing."

Both men were silent for a long moment.

"Now what?" Blake asked.

MacReady chuckled again. It was a grim chuckle. "I get the feeling you and me are about the only two guys qualified to stop this infection from leaving Antarctica...if it _can_ be stopped. As for right now? Don't worry, I've got a place we can go and start figuring this shit out..."

The helicopter kept flying into the antarctic wastes.


End file.
